


Devilishly Heavenly Bakes

by junkshopdisco



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, The Great British Bake Off RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Great British Bake Off Fusion, Baking, Christmas Fluff, Fandom Trumps Hate 2020, Fluff and Humor, M/M, Musician Crowley (Good Omens), Pining, Priest Aziraphale (Good Omens), References to Addiction, The Great British Bake Off References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:34:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 30,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28456914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junkshopdisco/pseuds/junkshopdisco
Summary: Twitter vicar Reverend Aziraphale and former lead singer of the Hell Hounds Anthony Crowley have both enrolled for a special festive edition of the Great British Bake Off. Aziraphale needs to win to prove to the diocese that he can take a more modern message to the masses, while Crowley is looking to rehabilitate his image as a Devil-worshipping bad boy.Early on, they identify each other as tough competition and set out to secure victory—tackling unexpected weddings, storms, and Sargent Shadwell, who may well accidentally blow the tent up before they make it to the Show Stopper.
Relationships: Anathema Device/Newton Pulsifer, Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Sergeant Shadwell/Madame Tracy (Good Omens)
Comments: 27
Kudos: 95
Collections: Fandom Trumps Hate 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Magnolia822](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magnolia822/gifts).



> For the lovely Magnolia822, for Fandom Trumps Hate x
> 
> I also made Crowley's Rare Soul Gems mixtape, and you can listen here [on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2eGDOXiZQUDwTNMxPCbMeI?si=16wnK8exRRyq2PF_pZSBcw)

_The new series of everyone’s favourite cookery show The Great British Bake Off starts filming next month. This time, famous faces will be competing in a series of fiendish challenges to raise money for a range of good causes just in time for Christmas. It’s hoped the show will stir up rivalries and cause resentment to simmer, whipping viewers into a frenzy as the celebs try their hand at festive baking._

_Today, producers gave us here at ShowBiz a sneak peek at the line-up._

_First into the famous tent will be NEWT PULSIFER, former technology correspondent on long-standing kids’ TV show Blue Peter. Regular readers of the ShowBiz column might remember Pulsifer was fired for causing a catastrophic studio-wide blackout live on air after pressing the wrong button during a demonstration of how to make a vomiting unicorn using a Raspberry Pi. “I don’t know what happened, really,” Newt said at today’s launch, “let’s hope the cake mixers are on a trip switch.” Indeed. Let’s also hope he’s better with real raspberries than electronic ones._

_The second name in the mix is MADAME TRACY, who’ll be familiar to older readers of the gossip pages. Back in the 80s, the socialite was linked to several high-profile politicians before ducking out of the limelight to focus on her work as a medium. “Just fancied a bit of a change,” she said, when asked why she’d decided to brave the spotlight once more. “Nice to get out of the house occasionally, isn’t it?”_

_Joining them will be REVEREND AZIRAPHALE, who declared his intention to bring, “light to the masses—whether they need it in their personal life or their sponge cake.” The vicar has taken social media by storm with his blend of old fashioned recipes, homilies, and regular mishaps where he tweets a single letter, posts the wrong photo, or records his own feet instead of his face. He may need to rely on divine intervention to ensure things go smoothly for him._

_Everyone’s favourite vicar will be joined by ANATHEMA DEVICE, American podcast host and expert on the mystic, who is thought to have been chosen by the producers to appeal to US audiences. When asked if she could see herself winning in her crystal ball, she said, “It doesn’t work like that. Mystic forces are too busy with global matters to care about a silly little baking show.” You don’t need a Tarot deck to know that with an attitude like that, winning over audiences might be a challenge._

_With all that tour catering to enjoy, rock stars aren’t known for donning an apron, but that didn’t stop ANTHONY CROWLEY from signing up. The former lead singer of the Hell Hounds—who split ten years ago after attracting accusations of ties to the occult—has been somewhat of a recluse in recent years. Allegedly he slept through the whole of 2013 and has spent several long stints in rehab. His former colleague Ligur was asked how he fancied Anthony’s chances. “Crowley is a snake. They all better watch out he’s not swapping their sugar for salt, that’s all I’m saying.”_

_The last contestant announced today was SERGEANT SHADWELL, who viewers may remember from his unintentional starring role on Good Cop, Bad Cop, where his work as the locksmith in a bungled jewellery heist was immortalised on CCTV. Now out of prison, Shadwell promised viewers, “None of that fancy cookery nonsense.” Instead, his offerings will feature his own concoctions made from cupboard staples like condensed milk and own-brand cereals. Frankly, they may constitute a criminal offence on their own._

_With all these personalities in the mix you’d better set your timers, this festive edition of Celebrity Bake Off—which airs on Boxing Day—could be a real treat._

Crowley tossed the newspaper onto the kitchen table, watching as it skidded to a halt next to last night’s half-empty mug of lavender tea. _Go on Bake Off_ , his agent had said, _hang out with the rest of the has-beens, you might as well_. No one said anything about competing with a sodding vicar.

No, not _competing_. Beating. He would beat the vicar and show everyone that when it came to baking, goodness had nothing to do with triumph. He scooped up his phone and scrolled to the email he’d received a week or so ago.

_Dear Anthony,_

_We’re thrilled we’ll be seeing you for Bake Off this year! Please find attached the production schedule, hotel reservation as agreed with Satan, and a copy of our guidelines, including those pertaining to social media._

_You’ll be baking:_

_A signature bake: 12 cupcakes based on a classic cake, something recognisable to viewers, suitable for a festive family gathering_

_A mystery technical_

_A show stopper on the theme of “time to celebrate”_

_Please prepare the relevant recipes._

_Anything you need, please contact me or Claudia (cc. ed on this)._

_Regards,_

_Helga_

_Production Assistant_

Crowley ruffled his hair, sighing at his kitchen. The slate worktops were decked out with the highest end equipment known to man, but that didn’t mean he had any idea what he was supposed to make. Classic cake. Classic cake. What even did that mean, really? He pulled several volumes with glossy cover photos of dripping icing and artfully arranged blueberries shot like erotica down from the shelves, surveying the indexes and the various Post-It notes he’d stuck in there over the years. On some, he’d amended the quantities, added new flavours, and tweaked cooking times until the recipes were no longer quite so flawed. There was barely a page in any of them which didn’t bristle with brightly-coloured notations. He hauled his favourites over to the large, concrete table to peruse, flipping through page after page of chocolate mocha and Devil’s food and red velvet this and that.

An hour and a half later, he was sat, cross-legged on the table in the middle of the pile of books, chewing on a biro and concluding that there was nothing that made him feel like celebrating. Or nothing he could render in cake on prime-time TV, at least. Explaining to Mary Berry that he’d created a portrait of himself giving speedy but efficient head from profiteroles was not something he wanted to add to his Wikipedia profile. Alongside the myths about him biting the heads off live animals and defecating on a war memorial, it’d be too much.

He wondered if it would be bad form to duck out at this stage. On the one hand, the show _was_ for charity. On the other, he really wasn’t a big fan of looking like a fool. He flipped the newspaper over to where head shots of his competitors lined up across the page. The grinning idiot in the dog collar looked especially insufferable; Crowley could just imagine him pottering around a summer fete judging Victoria Sponges and wittering on about jam. That’s who was supposed to be on _Bake Off_ —people with quaint personalities and pastel clothing and a lovely old aunt in Tunbridge Wells who passed along a family recipe for the occasion.

Crowley watched it religiously, and often shouted at the TV to correct Mel and Sue when they offered up an incorrect factoid about the history of the choux bun, but he couldn’t have picked a more out of place setting for himself if he tried. Would they expect him to be friendly? To make small talk with someone who hosted _Blue Peter_? He doodled a moustache on the vicar and gave Anathema a pair of horns before returning to a cookbook he’d picked up while on tour in France. It didn’t have recipes in, just acres of glossy photos. He’d reverse engineered the ingredients and methodology himself one by one as a distraction activity just after the band imploded.

Looking at the notes now, the shaking of his hands was all too obvious in his writing. Through those endless, nothing-filled, purposeless days, he’d just needed something to focus on, something to busy his thoughts and his hands and keep both away from the whisky. It all started when he woke one afternoon to find _Bake Off_ playing on the TV in front of where he’d passed out, and as he lay there, cursing his head for being attached to the rest of him and watching sourdough rise in front of a praying figure, he realised he wanted to stop throwing up in sinks, meeting each day on wobbly legs and even less steady memories of how he got home. After a stint in an expensive facility packed with the bored and insecure and quite a lot of chanting about demons, he’d faced life alone. Making endless cakes was just enough to occupy him: one evening with nothing for company but his sobriety turned into a day, and then a week, and then eventually a whole year.

Crowley’s fingertips traced the picture of Black Forrest Truffle Cake to a Post-It note. He remembered writing it: a full twelve hours spent pacing the kitchen he’d just had installed, debating whether two tablespoons of liquor was something he could handle. He’d realised six hours in it was less to do with the two tablespoons and more to do with what he’d do with the rest of the bottle.

_Works fine without the kirsch._

_*Use cherry syrup instead._

_You are stronger than this._

Crowley’s hands balled at the sight of it. This was going to be harder than he thought.

* * *

Crowley arrived at the hotel an hour late, owing to the sat nav ballsing up a direction, causing him to take a wrong turn, and lose forty minutes of his life to a hellish one way system. The room was very basic—wardrobe at a bit of a list, covers on the bed aggressively shiny and purple, but there was a view of actual countryside from the window. Been a while since he’d had a view with actual trees in it, rather than potted trees in front of whatever passed for the view. He dumped his bag on the bed and corrected the lilt of his quiff, wondering if he should put his contacts in before the production meeting.

Fuck it.

He grabbed his jacket and headed out, following the directions one of Satan’s minions diligently put into his phone until the row of heras fencing and Portacabins reared up. Enclosed within them, a cluster of interns with clipboards were trying to look as if they were doing something vital and harassed producers who hadn’t slept for two weeks bustled about pointing at things and shouting at each other.

Beyond that, the roof of the tent pointed up towards a hazy blue sky. Crowley’s stomach turned over. He’d seen that tent spin into view on the credits dozens of times, the sky above it always blue, the clouds always small and fluffy, the metres of python-like cable always scrupulously out of view. In the course of his life, he’d stood on the some of the world’s biggest and most famous stages—the Pyramid at Glastonbury, Wembley, Madison Square Gardens—but somehow this was more nerve-wracking. It was like stepping into something he recognised from a dream.

“Hi,” he said, to one of the interns who stood at the gate with a clipboard and a pair of ridiculously large headphones. “Anthony Crowley.”

She checked him off a list, stuck her biro between her teeth while she fished the right pass out of her pocket. “On the left,” she said, handing him the lanyard. “In the office. Ask for Claudia.”

Crowley clipped the pass to his belt. There was a cake on one side and a picture of himself with a haircut he hadn’t sported for 10 years on the other above the words ‘Anthony Crowley’ and ‘artist’. When this was all over, he’d add it to his collection of triple As from Glastonbury and Reading, from world tours that took in everywhere from Tokyo to Sao Paulo, the wall of little laminated squares that proved once upon a time, he existed in more places than his own kitchen.

He picked his way between runs of thick, black cable and trackway to a Portacabin with a sheet of A4 taped to its door bearing the legend _Production Suite_. Crowley rapped on the doorframe and stuck his head in, but only got as far as the _Cl_ of Claudia before he noticed someone sitting on the desk.

A headful of blond curls, hands tucked neatly against his stomach, feet swinging in a manner that could only be described as gaily, a lived-in cream coat and polished brown shoes making him look like some kind of cake decoration: the damned vicar. He smiled, cheeks going doughy with it, a perfect confection of a person.

Crowley missed the last step in surprise. “Oh—er—hello,” he said, righting himself and adjusting his sunglasses as if he meant to do that. “Is this the—er—” He looked at the A4 sign again. “Guess it must be, mustn’t it.”

“Er—yes. Claudia has just nipped out to attend to an urgent something or other with a generator. Someone’s parked a car where it’s supposed to go, apparently. I expect she’ll be back in a minute.”

Crowley sighed. Typical. He just wanted to register and retreat to the hotel, gather his nerves and perfect his buttercream recipe in case the dream he’d had about his turning rancid proved prophetic. He let his gaze roam away from the vicar. On the wall were various posters about site safety and a large screen with a paused video sat on the desk at an angle which suggested no actual safety considerations had gone into placing it.

“She was just about to take me through the health and safety briefing.” The vicar cautiously held his hand out. “Aziraphale,” he said.

Crowley took his hand with some reluctance, noting how warm it felt against his. “Crowley,” he said, hoping the technical would be a pastry round. Very unforgiving of warm hands is pastry; consequently, it had always been his forte.

He swept the desk with a gaze. It fell upon a bundle of papers, one of which had his name on. He skimmed the first page for where he needed to sign to say he’d mind where he was going and reached for the remote.

“You don’t think we should wait for Claudia?”

Crowley hit play. “Watch the video, sign the thing to say you won’t steal a forklift and drive it into a tree without the proper permit. Easy peasey.”

The DVD leapt into life. A bland guy in a too small Hi-vis vest was apparently going to take them through the perils of a live television set. Crowley sped him up, watching as he demonstrated keeping an eye out for reversing cameramen and tripping over stray cables at 16 times his usual speed.

After that, the video moved on to how the ovens in the tent work–anything put in it will be hot, so use the gloves provided–followed by food hygiene: don’t lick the spoons and put them back in the bowl in case you’ve got rat syphilis; if you cut yourself alert a member of production and bleed in the assigned area until a first aider arrives; do try your very best not leave a false nail in a rock cake because no one needs to see Paul getting a Heimlich from Mary Berry and chucking up it up like a fur ball.

The guy on screen clapped and indicated the microwave as a source of potential danger by placing a fork in a glass of water inside one and donning goggles as he hit the on button. “Who on earth doesn’t know not to put metal in—” Crowley scoffed, and turned to Aziraphale for agreement.

He was taking notes.

“Seriously?” Crowley said, looking between him and where the guy was explaining _baking tins are not to be placed in microwaves under any circumstances_ as sparks lit up the inside of the microwave.

“Important information,” Aziraphale said, his tongue caught between his lips as he tried to get it all down.

“Right. Course.”

Crowley leant on the edge of the desk next to him and flicked the guy back to normal speed so Aziraphale didn’t have to write so furiously to keep up.

* * *

By the time they had finished the video and taken the induction tour of the tent—which consisted of being given the same _please don’t put the baking trays in the microwave speech_ by two different harassed production assistants—it was sunset, an orange-y glow falling across the trees and tickling the grass in front of them as they headed out into the cold.

“How many people,” Crowley said, “do you think have put a baking tin in one of the microwaves that they make such a thing of it?”

“Half a dozen or so I expect,” Aziraphale said, with a prim smile. “Maybe the stress gets to people.”

“Hmmm.”

They walked in silence to the gate, which was marked by a break in the fence running around the entire enclosure, separating them all off from the grand stately house which had leant its grounds for the occasion. “It’s quite exciting though, isn’t it?” Aziraphale said. “To think, tomorrow we’ll be in there with the actual Mary Berry.”

“Something very honest about Mary, isn’t there?” Crowley said. “And her recipes never let you down. They’re designed for ordinary people to follow—she’s not trying to impress anyone with how much she knows. She wants you to succeed. It’s—invigorating, in a world full of ego.”

Aziraphale hummed. “Paul is _very_ handsome though.”

“Well yes,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale’s answering smile was just tinged with relief.

“So…where are you staying?” Aziraphale asked.

“Little hotel down the road.”

“Oh, the charming one with all the ivy?”

Crowley shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Yeah. I guess. Is it charming? Duvet in mine is very shiny.”

“I expect you’re used to a higher standard. Being very famous and all.”

They came to a stop where Crowley had abandoned his car at a jaunty angle on the grass where someone may or not have been intending to leave a generator. “Do you…want a lift?” Crowley said.

“Oh, would you mind?”

“Not at all.”

Crowley gestured for Aziraphale to take the passenger door, unlocking it for him and nipping round to his own side. He slid into the driver’s seat, cradling the paperwork that had been forced upon him to his chest with one hand so he could dig out his phone with the other. Of his fourteen new messages only two were really worth reading, but he pretended to be intent on them anyway, reading some spam from a company he bought shoes off three years ago to take his mind off the curious way Aziraphale kept looking at him. Crowley supposed whatever corner of little England he hailed from saw less than its fair share of people in Yves Saint Laurent and snakeskin who drove Bentleys. He opened the map and took a quick look at it, before tossing his phone into one of the pockets in the door and starting the engine.

At the roar of it, Aziraphale clutched for his chest, then for a seatbelt that didn’t exist. The skid of the tires as they lurched off had him gripping the dashboard, fingernails turning white.

Crowley smirked. “It’s a four and a half litre,” he offered, by way of explanation, even though in truth that had less to do with it than Crowley’s belief there wasn’t any point in having pedals you didn’t push all the way down. “One of these won the Le Mans 24 Hour in 1928.”

“Fascinating,” Aziraphale said, with a gulp. “Do watch out for the—”

The gatepost of the stately home sped past, nothing more than a blur of old yellowed stone and lion shape. The Bentley ate the long driveway up, spewing gravel out behind it, and Crowley pretended not to notice Aziraphale’s wince as he leant over to turn on the stereo.

Aretha Franklin blasted out at full volume, midway through a sweeping chorus that gave Crowley goosebumps every time he listened to it.

“Well that—” Aziraphale listed like a ship in rough seas as Crowley took a corner and the Bentley shot out of the grounds and onto a twisting country lane. “—yes that’s certainly—er—lost none of its—remarkable the speakers still work like that after all this time.” Crowley barely managed to hide his smirk, pressing the pedal into the metalwork and focusing on the rapidly approaching horizon amongst the blur of autumn trees. “Do you think we’re all staying there at the same hotel? All the contestants, I mean?”

“Dunno. Why?”

“I was hoping to meet some of the others,” Aziraphale said.

“Check out your competition?”

“Of course not,” Aziraphale said, settling against his seat a little with an indignant wiggle. “I’m just being friendly. Have you met any of them before?”

“Me?” Crowley said, glancing across. “When would _I_ have encountered someone who works on _Blue Peter_?”

“I thought you might have played on the show, perhaps.”

Cocking his head, Crowley squinted at him, but apparently it was a genuine comment. “I don’t think they’re very big on my kind of music on CBBC, Aziraphale.”

“Oh, really? I wouldn’t know. I don’t really listen to anything except hymns and Radio 4, I’m afraid.”

They passed the rest of the journey in silence, apart from Aziraphale’s occasional noise of surprise and consternation every time they took a bend. They rounded the long hedge that ran around the hotel to be met by rather a large crowd of people in the driveway, some of whom sprang out of the way as Crowley slammed on the brakes and they glided to a halt in another cloud of gravel. Aziraphale was slightly breathless when Crowley turned the engine off, and Crowley avoided looking at him so as not to burst out laughing at it.

Crowley ran his hands over the steering wheel, regarding the crowd. “Busy,” he said.

Aziraphale leant in conspiratorially. “I wonder if they’re fans of someone on the show. Or you—maybe they’re here for you!”

“Doubt it,” Crowley said, opening the door and swinging his feet out. “My fans are usually a little less—” He surveyed the range of suits and floral dresses. “—whatever this is.” He was just about to ask the nearest person what all the commotion was about when his phone burst into life, the ringtone—a riff from the Hell Hounds’ biggest hit—making Aziraphale clutch for the front of his jacket.

Crowley swiped to answer it. “Hello?”

“Crowley.”

The voice on the other end sent a chill down Crowley’s spine. Crowley covered the receiver with his hand and met Aziraphale’s eye. “My agent,” he said.

“Oh well then I won’t keep you,” Aziraphale said. “See you tomorrow. Thanks ever so for the lift.”

With a quick smile, he turned and made for the stairs up to reception, his neatly polished brown shoes clicking on the stone.

“Yes?” Crowley said.

“Just checking you arrived.”

“Safe and sound,” Crowley muttered. He edged around the crowd to the side entrance marked Staff Only, slipping through a door with fogged out glass panels to find himself in a corridor leading to the kitchens and then what appeared to be the dining room.

“I just wanted a word about the precariousness of your position,” Satan said. “It’s one thing to go on a baking show and win, quite another to lose.”

“Er—yeah—I’ve got that.”

“What I mean is—failure is not an option, Crowley. We expect you to do everything necessary to secure victory.”

Crowley frowned. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was being threatened with, but Satan had talked in the past about all the unsavoury details of Crowley’s misdeeds he had on file, that if Crowley ever stopped bringing in the money, he’d have no choice but to release them to the press. _No publicity is bad publicity, Crowley, at least not for me. Remember that._ “Yeah—I mean—there’s no way of knowing how good the others will be but I think my hibiscus is a real contender.”

“Good, good. Now listen—”

Crowley wandered as far as the dining room, halting when it wasn’t set up for the next sitting as he’d thought it would be. The tables all had posies on them and at the top of the room sat a long table covered in flowers and presided over by an imperious three-tier cake with two tiny people on top.

Crowley looked back towards reception. Now he was really looking, the crowd of people were all very smartly and specifically attired: suits with the faint odour of moth repellent suggesting they only came out of the wardrobe once a year mixed with off the shoulder gowns and shawls and at least three women were wearing the same shade of aggressively awful mint. He edged through the room, and in a nook where the breakfast buffet might conceivably be expected to be, there was instead an arch of balloons bearing the legend: _Bev & Barry._

Satan was still saying something, but Crowley’s attention was caught by a noise disturbingly like a sob outside on the patio. A woman in what he hoped was a hastily chosen wedding dress was sitting on a low wall, using a bouquet as a hanky.

“Got to go,” Crowley said. “Speak later.” He opened the French windows and leaned out. “Are you alright?” The woman glared up from where she was dripping tears and snot into a delicate and unnatural mint rose. “Oh—no—er—of course you’re not. What’s the matter?”

In all truth, Crowley had never been very good with crying. Or any emotion, really, but as he was going to be on a baking show and everything, he sat down on the wall next to her and shoved his red silk pocket square at her. “Less prickly than your roses,” he offered.

“Florist took the spikes off.”

“That was—nice of them. What’s going on?”

The woman took the hanky and dabbed at her face with it. “S’off, innit.”

Crowley looked from her to the balloon arch and back again. “Barry get cold feet?”

“Cold what? He’s in the carpark trying to get enough signal to Google another vicar.”

“He’s—sorry, he’s what?”

Bev sniffed. “The one who’s supposed to do it broke down four hundred miles away. I told Barry to leave it—there’s no such thing as Rent A Vicar—but he wouldn’t have it. All this—” She waved at the dining hall. “—it’s non-refundable. I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

Crowley sighed. It was nothing to do with him. Why did he care some woman’s vicar had no-showed on her wedding day? He didn’t. Marriage wasn’t even a real thing, just a made-up convention designed to prop up the patriarchy and the gift tag industry.

He looked across the empty room to where the guests were milling down the hall. A young boy who should, by rights, be sliding on his knees across the dance floor right now to Def Leopard or some such other wholly inappropriate track was glumly kicking at the skirting board. Off to one side, the three-tier cake and its jovial good luck message sat alone and unloved. And fine, Crowley didn’t hold with marriage particularly but a cake someone had obviously slaved over going uneaten tugged at what passed for his heart strings.

“Back in a minute,” he said.

* * *

The top floor of the hotel was decorated exclusively with portraits of ducks. Crowley, having exhausted all of the floor below, surveyed the identical doors before gingerly knocking on the closest one. No reply, so he moved along to the next one. Inside the room, someone definitely moved. He put an ear to the wood, and the strains of an old choral number curled towards him, along with the distinctly resonate tones of someone singing along in a voice that wouldn’t sound out of place trying to prop up a reluctant crowd of school children at a carol service.

Crowley knocked, adding, “It’s me. Crowley.”

The door opened almost immediately. Aziraphale had dispensed with his coat and rolled up the cuffs of his sleeves, his collar loosened at his throat. “Oh, hello,” he said. “This is—an unexpected pleasure. What might I be able to do for you?”

“Quick question,” Crowley said. “Are you, like, fully functioning as a vicar or is it just a social media thing?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Crowley waved. “Whatever licenses you need to—I don’t know—officiate things and drizzle water on children to indoctrinate them. You’ve got the certificates or the membership card or whatever it is?”

Aziraphale considered him for a moment. “Do you mean—have I been ordained?”

Crowley considered the duck portrait to one side of the door. The word rang bells but organised religion was something he hadn’t thought about for a very long time. “Suppose I did, what would the answer be?”

“Yes, I’m—a practicing vicar, if that’s how you want to think about it.”

“Ok well, there’s a woman downstairs who needs one.”

Aziraphale’s eyes went wide and he leant out into the corridor. “Oh dear, is something wrong?”

“Just…come and see, will you?”

Aziraphale grabbed his coat and his room key, closing the door swiftly behind him. “Lead on,” he said, with a sweeping gesture at the stairs.

* * *

Back at the wedding reception, Bev had moved to sit glumly on one of the chairs, her elbow on the table as she poked at the name card for one of the guests. She looked up as Crowley sauntered in, Aziraphale trotting at his heels in an effort to keep up. “Bev, this is Reverend Aziraphale,” Crowley said. “She needs a vicar. Hers had a breakdown.”

“Oh my,” Aziraphale said, his eyes sweeping the room. He seemed to put it all together as quickly as Crowley had and took the chair beside her, flicking the tails of his coat out behind him like a character in a period drama. “That is a pickle.”

Bev straightened in the chair. “Are you the guy from Twitter who tweets all that stuff about cheese? Had some sort of mishap with gouda?”

Aziraphale’s face turned from concerned and a healthy pink to bright red. “Er—” His gaze skittered briefly over Crowley’s face before he fixed on a smile as fake as Crowley had seen in all his years. “I rather think I might be, but I assure you that it has no bearing on my ability to minster,” he said, silencing Crowley’s many questions about what sort of mishap with a glance. “Anthony informs me you need help?”

Half an hour later, the guests had been ushered in and the chairs rearranged in neat rows and programmes for the service distributed. Aziraphale produced a bible from one of the pockets in his coat, and when Crowley tried to sneak towards the exit, laid a hand on his elbow and said, “You will stay, of course? I get terribly nervous at weddings. It’s such a big occasion.”

Crowley stationed himself at the back, listening to the verses and the vows, watching the bobbing of a very badly chosen hat on the bride’s side and muttering his way through a song that had apparently been a favourite of a long-departed grandma sung with neither enthusiasm nor skill by the assembled guests. Aziraphale blithely rocked on his heels through the whole thing, radiating warmth as if he’d known both Bev and Barry a lifetime and couldn’t be happier for them. Crowley had to admit his voice had a soothing tone and he could well picture himself in a pew, nodding off to the sound of it.

As it was, the service drew to a close and the bride and groom walked down the aisle to the sound of applause, leading the guests out into the garden for ten minutes and a glass of sparkling wine so the hotel staff could reorganise the chairs for dinner.

Aziraphale greeted a conveyor belt of guests, rotating through a handful of phrases: “Yes, lucky I was here. Divine intervention, perhaps!”; “Oh yes I will be sure to stay for some cake.”; “May I say that is a lovely outfit.” A couple of people asked for selfies and he tried to wriggle out of it before conceding, making a meal of getting himself into the frame and looking at the camera, which seemed to delight the small crowd assembled around him.

It was impressive, the vivacity he brought to utter banality, but Crowley supposed a lifetime in the clergy was a lot of practice. He didn’t know how Aziraphale did it; but then he supposed what he’d spent a lifetime doing wasn’t much different. Swap the dog collar for an actual one and the good-natured one-liners for shouting swearword-peppered anarchy into a microphone and that was the past few decades of his life. It was all performance, the repetition of certain lines for the benefit of an audience who expected to hear them. 

Crowley looked for a moment to make his escape, thinking to do a runner as soon as everyone was called in for dinner, to use the cover of the crowd to dart up to his room and Deliveroo himself a pizza to ignore while he went over his recipe for tomorrow. The hotel manager announced everyone was free to take their seats but before Crowley could make for the stairs, Aziraphale appeared at his elbow.

“Would you care to join me for a drink?”

Crowley adopted a pose of the casual _no not really, I’m very tired_ sort, but made the mistake of looking up. The smile Aziraphale sported wasn’t quite as easy or carefree as it looked in the paper. There was something entreating about it, as if he didn’t want to be alone. Crowley vacillated and tugged his hair, but he knew he’s going to say yes. He pointed at the bar. “Sure.”

It turned out to be less of a bar and more of an old lady’s lounge that someone had stuck a few beer pumps in. The armchairs were floral and the bare brick fireplace had hundreds of brass horseshoes nailed to it and an arrangement of flowers that had been dead for a century in the hearth. Beyond that lay a nice terrace with dancing lightbulbs hanging from the trellis. Crowley could imagine people who do date nights coming here to get away from their lives for a bit while sinking a bottle of house white, taking a photo for Instagram. 

At the bar, Aziraphale surveyed the range of local ales before selecting one alarmingly but hopefully not portentously called Doom. “What would you care for?” Aziraphale said, with a polite smile.

“Cherry Coke for me,” Crowley said, leaning on the bar next to him. “Ice, no lemon.”

Aziraphale’s eyebrows leapt in surprise, but he didn’t say anything, so Crowley didn’t either. Crowley’s history was no secret, but if Aziraphale was telling the truth about his media consumption, there was a chance he didn’t know. Crowley’s infamy usually proceeded him like a cloud of cheap perfume, but he wasn’t sure he’d ever done anything newsworthy enough to make its way to _The Today Programme_. They took their drinks over to a table looking out over the terrace, sat surveying the garden and the dancing lightbulbs for a moment, but Crowley had never really been much good with silence. Especially not in a bar with temptation all around him. “So what are you making, then?”

“I’m not likely to tell you, am I,” Aziraphale said, with a bristle in his shoulders. “We’re competitors.”

“What do you think I’m going to do, sabotage your Battenberg by thinking about it?”

“You could steal my recipe.”

“How? I had to submit a list of ingredients weeks ago, same as you did, so I couldn’t steal it, even if I wanted to.”

Aziraphale considered it for a moment before rearranging his coat. “I’m not sure how you’d do it, merely that it’s possible. I just think it’s best if we—”

“Black velvet for me,” Crowley said.

“Really?” Aziraphale leant in, dropping his voice, his eyes eager. “That’s frightfully tricky. And a little risky, with the dye and the chance you could dry the cake out and everything. Are you quite sure you can pull that off?”

Crowley sipped his drink. “I make them all the time,” he said. “Little icing pentagram on the top, the works. Not much good for summoning evil spirits but should work a treat to attract the best lighting from the production team and that’s better than anything the Devil ever offered me.”

Aziraphale sat back with a tut. “I don’t hold with jokes about that sort of thing.”

Tingling with having gotten just a little bit under the good vicar’s skin, Crowley planted his elbows on the table and leant in. “Go on, give me the scoop. What are you doing for the signature?” he said.

“Oh very well,” Aziraphale said, flicking lint that didn’t exist off his sleeve. “I will be making cakes tinged with fruit syrup and decorated with miniature fruit, to symbolise the cornucopia offered in the Garden of Eden.” He ducked closer. “They’ll be two contrasting flavours, almost along the lines of a sweet and sour combination representing the duality of man.” Aziraphale smiled into his glass. “And you?”

“Like I said. Chocolate.”

Aziraphale waited a beat too long for Crowley to elaborate before realising that was it, and letting his smile fall.

“I’m going for style over substance,” Crowley said.

“Oh, so you’ll be bringing all your talents to bear on the decoration?”

Crowley blinked at him. “Well I’ll be very nicely dressed.”

Aziraphale laughed, the kind of deep-bodied laugh that seemed to originate in his toes and travel all the way up through his body. It gave him the kind of glow Crowley only normally saw on bus stop adverts for bronzer, the shimmery kind with names like Iridescent Desire or Moonlight Lust. Crowley’s chest went tight. He breathed out through his nose, twice, to try and make it disappear.

“Anyway,” Aziraphale said and lifted his glass in invitation. “To the contest. Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”

Crowley winced. “Oh don’t bring Corinthians into it,” he said, but knocked his glass against Aziraphale’s anyway, taking a sip from his Cherry Coke in an attempt to take the taste of the Bible away.

Aziraphale lifted his eyebrows in surprise again. “You’re familiar with scripture?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

Aziraphale’s gaze swept over Crowley. “You just don’t seem the sort.”

Crowley shrugged. He supposed he didn’t and to a large extent that was the point.

Across the room, a couple of wedding guests approached the bar, waiting to be served. They glanced over, heads ducked together in a way Crowley recognised from restaurants and bars and nightclubs, the glance of dawning recognition, the nervous negotiation about if Crowley really was who they thought. He’d cut his hair since his days on the front pages of the tabloids, but he was still distinctive enough, he supposed, for people of a certain age and disposition to recognise. “Incoming,” he said.

Aziraphale gave them both the once over and added, out of the corner of his mouth, “I assumed you’d be an atheist, given your chosen profession.”

“I am. But why do people always assume that if someone’s not religious, it’s because they’re ignorant of, rather than deeply familiar with, the source material?” Crowley rubbed at the table. “Only reason most Christians carry on being Christians in my opinion is they haven’t actually bothered to read the Bible.”

It was a line Crowley had used before in interviews, hoping for someone to bite so he could get right into it. He wasn’t sure why he was trying to get a rise out of Aziraphale, only that the impulse to do so itched underneath his skin in a way that made it impossible to ignore.

“But you have?” Aziraphale said, in a carefully measured tone.

“Of course I have.” Crowley gestured irritation, but Aziraphale smiled gently in what Crowley was tempted to think of as encouragement. “Believe in making my own mind up about things,” Crowley said. “Want to know what I’m objecting to.”

“There are things in the Bible you object to?”

“There are things in the Bible you _don’t object_ to?”

Aziraphale’s lips twitched into what would be a genial fete-judging smile in other circumstances, the sort he might sport upon realising he had to award a ribbon to an awful woman who undeniably made the best jam. “It’s not for me to judge.”

One of the blokes from the bar started weaving his way over, loosening his tie as he got closer to the table. “Scuse me,” he said, “are you—”

“Yep,” Crowley said, already standing and reaching for the pen he always kept in the breast pocket of his jacket. In his experience, it was crucial to dispatch these encounters as ergonomically as possible. “Scrawl on a beermat do you or would you rather a photo?”

“It’s not for me,” the bloke said, extending his phone. “My missus is a big fan. She’s got a shrine to you in the garage.”

Crowley leant in and did the same fixed grin he’d been doing for the best part of two decades. “Doesn’t it make you feel a bit iffy, all the stuff about slavery?”

“What?” the bloke said.

“Sorry, I was talking to—” Crowley gestured to Aziraphale before shaking the guy’s hand. “Tell her I said hi, keep the faith.”

With a head shake of slight confusion, the bloke shuffled off, allowing Crowley to take his seat again, drawing his Cherry Coke across the table, grounding himself in the cool feel of the glass against his skin.

Aziraphale shifted on his chair. “There are, of course, some passages of the Bible that do not necessarily reflect the values a good Christian would hold today.”

Crowley snorted. “That’s one way to put it. I mean admit it—some of it is just plain nonsense. Leviticus, for example. You can’t worship if you’ve got a broken hand or foot—even if you’ve got eczema? What kind of prejudiced, arbitrary—” Crowley cut himself off with an exasperated huff. “And all that stuff about cutting off a woman’s hand if she grabs the balls of a man fighting with her husband. Literally what is that about? That must happen way less often than someone putting a cake tin in a microwave.”

Aziraphale tilted his head but didn’t look like he was about to answer, so Crowley went on. “And don’t get me started on the part about how children who curse their parents should be put to death. Children. Children! Why would anyone read that and think of _yeah this is the religion for me_? Kids _should_ be stoned to death for a bit of backchat and while we’re at it, it’s absolutely fair to demand people be mauled to death by bears for making fun of men with no hair? What sort of diktat is _that_?”

Aziraphale tugged down his cuffs and lined them perfectly up with the ends of his coat sleeves, revealing just a flash of gold cufflink. “As I said, I do not judge the words of the Holy book. I merely attempt to uphold the spirit. And besides, the Bible and God are two completely different things.”

Crowley hummed. He’d been expecting a more defensive retort and Aziraphale not returning his volley rather took the sting out of it. “Supposed to be their word, though, isn’t it? You’d think they might send down some edits now and then, move with the times.”

Lifting his pint to his lips, Aziraphale met Crowley’s eye in a manner that hinted he might secretly agree. “You’ve given this a lot of thought.”

Crowley shrugged. “Having _accidentally_ been sucked into being the leader of a band who _accidentally_ became famed for their use of dark forces due to a couple of things _accidentally_ bread crumbed out to our fans by management in an effort to increase sales hardly makes me an expert.” Crowley reached for a beermat and started picking it apart. “I’m not against the concept of God,” he said. “The one in the Bible just seems like—” He stopped himself, but Aziraphale gestured for him to go on. “Well—a bit of a dick.”

He watched for Aziraphale’s reaction, expecting him to blow up like Crowley’s family would’ve, cursing him to Hell and back for daring to suggest such a thing. Aziraphale, however, just smiled serenely.

Crowley abandoned the pieces of beermat he’d been stacking and sipped at his drink. “This is a terrible Cherry Coke. Is it post mix?”

“I believe it might be, yes.”

“Is there any reason they can’t make it taste the same as it does in a bottle? You put the same ingredients together—flavourings and water and whatever it is they use to carbonate it—well that’d be… carbon I guess—why doesn’t it always come out tasting the same?” He lifted his glass and considered it. “It’s shoddy is what it is. If I had all the power of capitalist global supremacy behind me, I’d ensure some consistency.”

Aziraphale lifted an eyebrow in a way Crowley was tempted to consider wry. “I dare say you would.”

“We’re about the same age, right?” Crowley said, giving Aziraphale an apprising once-over.

“I suppose we may well be,” Aziraphale said.

“Do you remember when soft drinks actually had some bite to them? When they actually tasted of the things they claimed they were on the labels?” Aziraphale offered him an indulgent hint of a smile. “Like real ginger beer—do you remember that?” Crowley said. “When everyone used to make their own? Sugar, water, ginger and that… fermenting stuff, whack it in whatever container you’ve got lying around and it’d just keep multiplying until you ended up with an entire flat full of the stuff. Much easier—and better—than that kombucha stuff everyone’s into nowadays. Or this flat abomination which barely tastes of a single cherry.” He lifted his glass to consider it, aware that Aziraphale was watching him with amused curiosity.

“And you’ll be bringing this passion for flavourings to the contest, will you?”

Crowley snorted, cut off when, from the dining room, came an unbearable blare of feedback, followed swiftly by an apology which also descended into howling static. “Evening do started then.”

Aziraphale put his fingers in his ears, grimacing as the feedback gave way to the opening chords of The Hell Hounds’ biggest hit.

“Oh well that is definitely my cue to leave,” Crowley said.

“I do believe it might be mine too,” Aziraphale said. He drained his glass, mopped the corners of his mouth with a napkin he’d had secreted somewhere, and got to his feet. “Until tomorrow,” he said, a gleam in his eye as he added, “let battle commence.”


	2. Chapter 2

The tent had been scoured to within an inch of its life and sat underneath a leaden sky that had been threatening rain since dawn. The interior had been decked out like a particularly saccharine Netflix Christmas film—garlands of pine and fairy lights on anything which could bear the weight of one and sprigs of holly on everything else, a massive tree covered in fake snow in one corner. Outside in the meadow, with all the cables miraculously out of shot, Mel and Sue were filming a piece to camera, creasing each other up every four seconds over which contestant might be a choux in.

The contestants mingled, eyeing each other up while trying to pretend they were doing nothing of the sort and sifting through the box of festive head ware they were supposed to don for the final round. Madame Tracy wafted around the group, calling everyone dear and asking for their star signs, nodding and tutting as Anathema offered her opinion on which rising sign was naturally predetermined to be good at pastry while trying on a pair of reindeer antlers.

Shadwell puffed his chest out and stated several times, at increasing volume, that the whole thing was stuff and nonsense, quirking one eyebrow when Madame Tracy reached for his palm and said he had an interesting heart line that spoke of a soul like a deep dark well and a lot of promise when it came to icing. Surreptitiously he snagged a set of deeley boppers with mistletoe on and hid them down his trousers.

Newt—who Crowley did recognise vaguely from his afternoons propped against the sofa with only the television and a hangover for company—stared out at the cameras as if only just realising what he’d signed up for, crinkling an elf hat that was already shedding its fur up in his hands. “I don’t know the difference between a gas mark and centigrade,” he said, eyes wild. “Do you think that will be important?”

Aziraphale approached Crowley with a tinsel halo on a spring cradled against his arm. “All ready?” he said.

“As I’ll ever be, I expect.”

Aziraphale’s gaze darted to the crown of holly Crowley had snagged from the box while everyone else was being too polite to choose something. “Sleep well?”

“Fine,” Crowley said. He’d sat awake for a few hours, moonlight glinting off the aggressively purple duvet, music from the wedding disco radiating up through the floor. He’d spent the time absolutely not thinking about his proximity to a bar and all the things that might be in it, and going through his recipes, wondering why he’d downplayed his plans to Aziraphale, made it sound like his efforts would be basic when he’s spent months perfecting them, balancing the flavours.

Looking around at the rest of them, it seemed like—against the odds—the vicar might prove his strongest opponent. The problem was, after spending an evening with him, Crowley wasn’t sure whether or not he actually wanted to beat him.

“There was quite a lot of Motown, wasn’t there,” Aziraphale said, “in the small hours.”

“Oh I didn’t mind that. Like a bit of soul, actually,” Crowley said, adding, “makes up for not having one of my own.”

Aziraphale’s brow creased. “You think you don’t have a soul?”

“Read my press clippings,” Crowley said. “It’s a pretty common assessment of me. I’m a soulless, heartless, Devil-worshiping bad boy.”

“I hardly think someone who fitted that description would care about finding a bride a replacement for her errant vicar.”

Crowley was about to object that his intervention was just self-preservation to do with not wanting to be cried on when Claudia came over and told them the tent was ready and they should don their festive apparel make their way to their assigned benches. They had to do the trip twice, since Newt fell over right in front of the camera, unable to see where he was going because the elf hat sagged down over his eyes. Once they crossed the threshold, they were rewarded with the smell of freshly baked sponge cakes from the test bakes that had just been completed to make sure the ovens were working properly.

Crowley was glad to find he’d been allotted one of the benches at the very back so he could survey everyone and that Aziraphale was to his side, his bench a sunny yellow which lit up his face. Obligingly Crowley hung up his jacket and holly crown, donned his festive green apron, and rolled up his sleeves, watching Aziraphale do the same.

While everyone settled, Crowley double-checked his ingredients, opening the canisters so he could be absolutely sure which was sugar and which salt. His phone buzzed in his pocket. Message from Satan:

_Don’t fuck this up Crowley._

“Charming,” Crowley muttered, and turned his phone off, but it did nothing for his nerves. He re-double checked the canisters and dipped his finger in the icing sugar to triple check he didn’t have it confused with baking powder, going through the recipe and the order in which he needed to do things, his fingers trembling slightly and his heart racing.

In front of him, Madame Tracy was attempting to untangle a bracelet from her voluminous lime green shawl. Shadwell shuffled over to help her, calling her a ninny and a hussy while helping her to remove it, and in front of them, Newt had his head caught in his apron while Anathema poked at her scales to try and turn the measurements into imperial.

A hush fell over everyone as the director sprang to life, ordering cameras to their positions before calling, “Action.”

Mel and Sue strode in, Mary and Paul on their heels having a semi heated discussion about who had the best recipe for mince pies and would be featured in the festive _Radio Times_. The range of seasonal knitwear on show was eye-watering: snowflakes in blinding white on blue for Paul; sparkly holly for Mary; a giant Christmas pudding to the solar plexus for Sue; and a Christmas tree that looked like it might actually light up for Mel. They arranged into a phalanx next to the window, beyond which it was still very clearly October.

“Welcome to the tent everyone,” Sue said. “Hope you’re all feeling festive and ready and raring to go. That is to say with the baking, not with a speedy exit through the back to get a last few gifts before the shops close. Now, the first challenge we have for you today is a nice simple one to ease you into things.”

“Yes,” Mel said, with a toothy grin. “To kick things off, we want you all to make us twelve cupcakes and frost them appropriately. They should be based on a classic cake—the sort of thing you might make for a festive family gathering. The judges will be looking for consistency across the batch and a good ratio of frosting to cake, plus a hint of something extra in the decoration. Right, judges?”

Mary and Paul surveyed them all, not unlike the way a History teacher would knowing they’d dropped in a fiendish exam question right before telling them all to turn the page. “A nice, springy sponge is what we’re looking for,” Mary said.

“And a strong flavour combination,” Paul added, rubbing his hands together. “I can’t wait.”

“All right everybody,” Mel said. “You’ll have ninety minutes for this first challenge, so grab your whisks.”

Sue beamed at them. “Ready, set, bake!”

Crowley reached for the chocolate chips, hoping no one would be able to see his hand shaking. There was no need to be nervous. None whatsoever. They were cupcakes. He must’ve made thousands. He wasn’t about the balls up _cupcakes_. He dug his fingernails into his palm, trying to steady his breath as he grabbed the bowl from the mixer and placed it on the scale. He measured the chocolate out precisely, but something about it disquieted him.

Fuck! The oven. Oven on first to pre-heat. Everyone knew that. He glanced around the tent to see if the cameras had picked up him making the most rookie of rookie errors, but they were focused on Newt, who was laughing near hysterically because he’d forgotten the paper copy of his recipe and didn’t have time to go back to the hotel to get it.

Crowley turned the oven on, checking twice it was on the right setting and temperature, and arranged his black and white striped cases in the tray. Next, he grabbed a small saucepan, tipping the chocolate chips into it and adding the milk. As he stirred the contents, waiting for them to melt, he glanced over at Aziraphale. He was humming contentedly to himself and seemed in no great rush, while ahead, Anathema was hunched over a series of handwritten notecards with the recipe on, which he could hear her telling the judges had been handed down through generations.

She pushed her glasses up her nose and regarded Mary Berry over the top of them. “Put my own _spin_ on them?” she said. “Of course not. My ancestors would be deeply offended and why would I mess with perfection?”

The presenters exchanged glances that said this would definitely be up for dissection in the judging tent later and moved on.

“Now,” Sue said, strolling over to Aziraphale’s bench, “we have a bit of a heaven and hell situation back here. Our favourite man of the cloth and our favourite rock star over there.” She gave Crowley a jovial wave. Crowley forced a grimace of reply and went back to his chocolate, stirring it vigorously to make sure it wouldn’t stick. He tried to tune it out, the banal chatter about how Aziraphale likes to bake for his flock and finds it a good way to unwind after a long day administering sermons to the weary and fragile.

Crowley set the chocolate mixture aside to cool before turning his attention to the mixer and creaming together sugar and butter. He was just cracking eggs into it and adding a dash of vanilla when Sue approached.

“Anthony,” she said. “You’re looking very intense.”

“It’s the outfit,” he said. “I can’t help it.”

Sue picked up the black food colouring while the camera team circled around her to get a shot over her shoulder of it. “And your cupcakes will be coordinating with you, will they?”

“That’s the general idea,” Crowley said, peering into the mixer to make sure his eggs weren’t splitting the mixture. He’d had cameras in his face before—in fact on one tour he’d even had one pinned to the lapel of his jacket to capture shots of the crowd from a mic stand perspective, which had on more than one occasion given the audience an unexpected close up of his nasal hair—but in his absence from the public eye, he’d somehow forgotten how staring down the lens of one reminded him uncomfortably of staring into the void.

Satisfied with the way the eggs had mixed in, he reached for the bottle next to the mixer.

“Vinegar?” Sue said.

“It’s a vital ingredient,” Crowley said. “There’s salt to go in, too.”

“You are sure you’re making cake and not, say, fish and chips?”

“I mean I hope so,” Crowley said, with his best rakish smile.

“Well, I look forward to trying some,” Sue said, “and if it doesn’t work out, scampi is on me.”

Crowley chuckled, even though he felt like doing nothing of the sort, and after Sue had checked with the team that they’d got everything they needed, she patted him on the arm, wished him good luck with it, and swore to leave him alone for a bit so he could get on with it. On the other side of the aisle, Aziraphale was waxing lyrical about gooseberries to Mel, resulting in them making funny faces at each other as if they’d just eaten a particularly sour one.

Crowley measured out the vinegar and buttermilk, tipping them carefully into the bowl and watching the paddle of the mixer whizz around. The consistency looked ok so he left it to it and reached for the melted chocolate, checking the temperature to make sure it wasn’t too warm to pour in. He combined the two, turning the speed of the mixer up to ensure they were well combined. He quickly checked both the clock and that the oven was up to temperature before measuring out the flour he needed—double checking it was indeed the flour and not something else; a mistake he’d seen too many contestants make.

The key to success with the next part was patience, to add the flour a spoonful at a time in order to ensure a good, fluffy texture. The first few times he’d made these, he hadn’t taken it slowly enough at all, and the ensuing cakes had been both dry and flat. He’d very greatly enjoyed tossing them at cars from his balcony.

After another quick time check, he started spooning in the floor. His own superstition was to add the baking powder, bicarb, and salt halfway through the flour rather than mixing it in, and by the time he had finished with the flour, the batter looked decently mixed. He turned the mixer off for a second to scrape down the sides. “Is that a lump?” he muttered. “Lumps won’t be tolerated.” He squished the offending clump of flour with his spatula before turning the mixer back on again.

Next came the food colouring. What Aziraphale had said in the bar was right: black was a tricky colour to pull off. Too little and his cupcakes would come out an unappealing grey, like someone had left a pair of socks in a boil wash, but too much and it would throw off the balance and result in a dry sponge. He closed his eyes for a second to picture the exact amount he wanted, trying to achieve a moment of pure, steady-handed zen, even though he could hear Shadwell cursing at something over the chorus of at least three different mixers and a blender.

Crowley took two deep breaths and uncorked the food colouring. It wasn’t off the shelf but his own special blend, which he’d spent seven months perfecting. He’d had to submit it to the producers for testing in case it poisoned Mary Berry, and he hoped whatever they’d done to it hadn’t affected it. As three drops left the glass bottle, they were inky perfection: dark and lucid as the perfect night sky captured in a glossy photograph. Crowley clenched his hands together and peered over the rim of the bowl. They swirled into the mixture, turning it first a purpley grey and then a raven-like black.

Satisfied there were no streaks left, he thumbed off the mixer and set about measuring the contents for each paper case precisely, weighing each one individually, so they’d all be the same size. He glanced up as something clattered to find Aziraphale consoling Shadwell at the same time as licking his cake mixture off a wooden spoon. How had he finished so quickly when he’d spent half his time gabbing to Mel?

Once all the cases were filled, Crowley opened the oven and carefully slid the tray onto the middle shelf. “I’m trusting you,” he muttered, giving them a little shake to even them off again. “No funny business.”

A second too late he realised the camera was focused on him, that now it would be immortalised, him threatening a Neff. That was all his image needed. He set both his timers in case one broke and assembled his ingredients for the frosting while a harassed-looking runner tried to clear up whatever it was Shadwell had dropped all over the floor.

While the cupcakes baked, Crowley set about fishing his wild hibiscus flowers out of the jar so they’d retain just enough syrup to sit nicely on the top without leaking everywhere. He arranged them in a neat row on kitchen paper, the camera right in front of him to capture whatever look of painstaking concentration he was inevitably making. He counted them to make sure he’d done enough before ducking down to check the progress of his bake.

Above the lips of each case he could see the cakes just beginning to peak. To his great relief, not one of them seemed to be higher than the others, so he checked the timer again before starting the frosting. He wrestled the paddle out of the mixer and replaced it with a balloon whisk, dolloping cream cheese into the glass bowl before spooning butter in to join it. The mixer he had at home had a steel bowl and he hoped that having a glass one now wouldn’t throw things off too much. He started the whisk, glancing over the top of it to where Aziraphale was dipping a variety of brightly coloured marzipan fruits into egg white and sugar and laying them out on brown paper to dry.

Aziraphale caught him looking and dipped a cherry into the glossy mixture. “I’ll save this one for you,” he called.

“Righty-ho,” Crowley replied, which he was pretty sure he’d never actually said before.

“All going alright?”

“Er—yeah—think so,” Crowley said, tilting his head to regard the window in the oven.

His timer ticked down.

Ten seconds.

Nine.

Eight.

He blew air out of his cheeks. He was fine for time. No need to panic.

Five.

Four.

Three.

Two—

Ding.

Crowley opened the oven.

The scent that wafted up to meet him was decadent vanilla. He rested the tray on a wooden board and pressed the knuckle of his middle finger to the centre of one of the cupcakes. It resisted just a little, his finger leaving no impression as the cake bounced back. He tested a couple more in the same way before deciding they were done, fishing each out to place on a wire rack to cool.

“I say, those smell smashing,” Aziraphale called on his way to the fridge with his frosting. He had a smudge of icing sugar on his cheek, which brought out a flush in his face, but if he was feeling the pressure, it didn’t show. His eyes gleamed and he looked to all intents and purposes entirely in his element as he closed the fridge with a small kick of his heel and pirouetted back to his station.

Compared to the chaos at the front of the tent—Newt desperately trying to get anything that resembled a cake into the oven and Madame Tracy sat on the floor with a Tarot deck to work out how much longer hers needed—it confirmed what Crowley had suspected. Aziraphale was his main competition. His decorations were strong—who could resist perfectly sugar glazed fruits when they’d been done so well?—but if there was one thing Crowley could do, it was a good, unexpectedly tart frosting.

He returned to the mixer, measuring out icing sugar, dried raspberries, raspberry extract, and a little of the syrup from the wild hibiscuses. The icing sugar poofed around him in a cloud as he mixed it into the cream cheese and butter, and he removed the bowl from the stand when he was done to mix the rest in by hand, so he could get the colouring he wanted. Not quite a swirl but not evenly mixed either; just a suggestion of deconstruction. Once he’d achieved that, he dipped a spoon in to taste it, adding a few more dried raspberry pieces than he would normally to bring a little extra sharpness to bear. The last thing he wanted was accusations of flavourlessness from Mary Berry.

At the front of the tent, Mel and Sue stood. “Half an hour to go everyone.”

“Get those cakes out and that frosting on!”

Newt wailed. Whatever he’d been doing, it hadn’t been cooking and batter dripped from both his counter and his glasses.

“Blast it!” Shadwell shouted from eye level with his oven, just before he disappeared into a cloud of acrid smoke.

Crowley wafted the worst of it away, squinting through the tears it brought to his eyes as he scraped his frosting into a piping bag. Somewhere behind him, a runner scurried towards the fire extinguisher, and in order to make the most of the cameras focussing elsewhere, Crowley took a moment to compose himself before bending over his rack of cakes. He assessed each of them with the tips of his fingers, turning them over to check the bottoms for residual heat, mentally balancing the time remaining against having enough time to really perfect the swirls of frosting.

To give them another minute, he checked the hibiscus blooms, re-counting them to make sure he wasn’t short. He wasn’t. He reached for the piping bag and squeezed it, dispensing a little onto a plate to clear the nozzle and any air pockets. He completed two perfect rosettes before moving onto the cakes themselves, breath racing as he drew the first one.

“Come on, come on,” he whispered to himself.

It seemed to take an age for him to complete the row. His fingers started cramping and his shoulder protested at the amount of tension coursing through his body, but he hovered at the exact same height over each cake so the angle where frosting met cake would be the same each time. In all honesty, he had no idea if it actually made a difference, but bringing that level of attention to detail to proceedings made him feel better.

Once they were all frosted, he allowed himself a moment to stand back and assess them. He nodded and reached for the first hibiscus flower, manoeuvring it into the centre of the rosette.

“Five minutes!” 

At Sue’s bellow, several of the other contestants flurried with activity.

Crowley took his time arranging the flowers; placement of them was absolutely key. When they were all lined up, he moved each cake onto the slate serving platter he’d bought specially, drizzling syrup over the lot in a pattern that owned a little to Jackson Pollock before dusting the entire thing with icing sugar.

He moved the slate to the end of his bench, keeping a keen eye on where Shadwell was; he hadn’t come this far to lose his entire display to a stray elbow. In his periphery, Aziraphale lifted a tea cup. He was finished too, but unlike Crowley, he didn’t stand protectively guarding his creation, but sat on a stool, his saucer cradled against his sleeve.

“One minute left!”

Madame Tracy disappeared behind a wall of glitter as she tossed it in the vague direction of her chopping board. Anathema was eye-level with a cake stand, adjusting the position of nicely executed yet violently green cakes. Shadwell was swearing and heaving something smoking out of the oven. Newt wafted a tea towel and looked like he might be crying.

“Time’s up!”

On the TV, this was the part where Sue’s face gave way to a panning shot around the tent and lingering close-ups on all their creations. In reality, there was a lot of muttering about lighting and production assistants appearing from wherever they’d been hiding with light meters and diffusers, and the whole thing took rather longer to achieve than Crowley’s nerves could stand.

Being judged wasn’t a wholly unfamiliar experience. It happened every time they put out an album or hit the red carpet at an awards show. Satan would slam reviews down onto the table and scream in his face that five stars wasn’t good enough or present him with pictures taken from unflattering angles and tell him to do better next time. Crowley was equally uncertain about how he was supposed to do better at getting into a taxi, or indeed how he was supposed to eke six stars out of a five-star system, although one time he had managed to persuade the NME to award them an extra row of stars. All it had cost him was some marginally libellous gossip about Stevie Nicks and a catering pack of fun size Mars bars, which was a bargain however you looked at it.

Being judged for his baking, however, had been keeping him up at night since he agreed to do the show, and there was no preparing for the cold, impress-me-or-perish glare of Paul Hollywood, nor indeed the please-don’t-disappoint-me sharpness in Mary Berry’s eyes.

They gave Newt short shrift; apparently not having a recipe to rely on had resulted in a barely cooked puddle rather than anything resembling a cupcake. Shadwell got similar treatment. Having refused to make a cupcake because they’re ‘too American’ and opted for jam tarts instead, he ballsed those up, setting fire to the jam and taking most of the pastry with it. Madame Tracy fared a little better, although her cakes were mostly frosting and glitter by the look of things.

“Is it edible glitter?” Mary asked, turning one and peering at it like someone might a gem they’d found which they suspected might be radioactive.

“Suppose it must be,” Madame Tracy said, with a weak smile.

Mary and Paul exchanged dubious glances before Paul sliced one in half and poked at the insides. “How much baking powder did you use?”

Madame Tracy winced. “You know I was about to put that in when I felt the strangest sensation. Cold fingers all up and down my spine, it was. I wouldn’t be surprised if this whole area is haunted.”

Mary lifted half of the cake to her mouth, distributing a large amount of glitter down her jumper. With something of a struggle, she swallowed a bite, and made a good show of considering it and trying to find something positive to say. “That is a tad…flat,” she said. “Better luck next time. They really are…most eye-catching.”

The cupcake glinted menacingly as she set it down in a puddle of its own decoration, Anathema straightening at her station as the judges approached.

“Ah,” Mary said, “these are the ones from an ancient family recipe, aren’t they?”

Shadwell muttered about that being cheating, that fine, he’d set his on fire but at least they were all his own work.

Anathema ignored him. “Quite,” she said. “My great-great grandmother wrote the recipe down, although we’ve been making it in our family for centuries.”

The judges divided the cake up, proclaiming it very tasty and well decorated, although neither seemed especially moved by it. They nodded their thanks before moving over to Aziraphale’s selection. He greeted them with a cheery, familiar, “Hello,” beaming at them all like they were old friends and presenting his array of cupcakes like a cherished spaniel that had made it to the final of Crufts.

His display was impressive: a table cloth in traditional red, ruched up around the cupcakes. The cakes themselves almost glowed golden brown, the icing was just tinged with peach, and each was decorated with a glistening sugar-dipped marzipan fruit. They looked delectable and Aziraphale clearly knew it.

“My my,” Mary said.

“Tuck in, Mary,” Sue said, “before I swipe the lot.”

“Don’t mind if I do.” Mary selected a cake topped with three perfect miniature apples and sliced it neatly in two, releasing a small river of custard. “Oh, look at that. The perfect consistency.”

She held it up for the camera and Paul’s consideration before popping a piece into her mouth. Her eyes widened in pleasure and Paul nodded his agreement.

“Those are very well done,” he said. “The passionfruit just cuts through the sweetness enough. Very well done.”

“Thank you, that’s very kind.” Aziraphale folded his hands across his stomach and smiled at both of them, before flicking his gaze to Crowley’s and raising his eyebrows.

Crowley tried to keep a neutral expression as the team reset around him, Sue leaning on the end of the bench. “What do you have for us here, then? They look fabulous.”

“Very emo,” Mel echoed. “I’m here for it.”

She had a point. The blood red flowers glistened like miniature crowns on a cushion of red-streaked frosting and just a hint of black beneath.

“Black velvet, with wild hibiscus and raspberry,” Crowley said.

“You know, I don’t think I’ve had hibiscus on a cupcake before,” Mary said. “And you—you grow these yourself, I hear?”

Crowley smiled uneasily. Talking about gardening always made him feel queasy; it wasn’t exactly the most rock star of pursuits. But then he supposed neither was making cupcakes.

“Yeah,” he said. “The—er—acidity of the soil is quite important to the—er—eventual flavour and when you’re preserving them, you don’t want the syrup to overpower them so I find it better to just do it all myself, really.”

He waited while the judges selected two from the platter and peeled them out of their cases. As he hoped, the sponge hadn’t greyed out in the oven, retaining their vivid darkness. “Difficult to pull off,” Mary said, “a colour like that. Let’s see how they taste.”

Crowley daren’t make a facial expression. He fixated on Mary’s long, snowball-decorated nails as she sliced the cake in half.

“Springy _and_ moist.”

Paul tossed a quarter of a cake into his mouth and chewed. “Good amount of chocolate in there.”

Mary nodded. “Yes there is, isn’t there?”

Thirty seconds passed agonisingly slowly.

Sue rocked backed on her heels.

Mel bit her thumb.

“The flavour on that frosting is quite exciting. That is—” Paul met Crowley’s eye. “—absolutely devilish.”

Crowley grinned.

* * *

Outside the tent, the sky rolled with angry clouds and the wind rushed across the grass, making it whisper. The contestants hunkered down under the copse of trees which would’ve given them shade on a fine day, clutching their aprons as they whipped around them and trying to hold on to most of their hairdo. The tent was being reset by a flurry of production assistants and interns, who scurried back and forth with armfuls of bowls and wooden spoons, and from the van hidden out the back appeared plastic tubs laden with the ingredients for the technical challenge, which had been measured out with science lab precision to give each contestant an equal chance of fucking it up.

One by one they were called to do a piece to camera about the first round. Newt spent most of his engaged in a losing battle to get his glasses to stay at the top of his nose and saying things like, “It could’ve gone better, but then it also could’ve gone a lot worse. When I tried that recipe at home, I took out the power for half the street.”

Anathema stood in front of the director now, her hair swirling around her despite her best efforts, one arm cradled across her chest to guard against the brisk wind.

Aziraphale sidled over to where Crowley was standing, a cup of tea resting against the crook of his elbow. “Went rather well, I think,” he said.

“Yes. Not bad at all.”

“I do hope the technical isn’t anything too vexing.”

Crowley straightened off the tree trunk he was leaning on. He’d actually been hoping the opposite, having spent a good chunk of the last few weeks poring over all of his cookery books and perusing the most fiendishly difficult recipes he could find. He was relatively certain he could make baumkuchan and handle a soufflé, even have a decent stab at a croquembouche. “Saw them loading the ingredients in just now,” he said.

“Oh, did you?” Aziraphale leant in. “Not that I would ever cheat,” he said, eyes darting around to make sure they weren’t being overheard. “But any…hint about what it might be?”

“I did get a glimpse of one thing,” Crowley said, returning his discrete stance as if they were trading state secrets, “it seems the recipe will definitely contain—” He paused for dramatic effect, waiting until Aziraphale had inched so close Crowley could see all the strata of different blues in his eyes. “—flour.”

Aziraphale slumped, but his eyes gave away his amusement. He stayed with Crowley anyway, sipping at his tea and commenting on the weather, which was undeniably on the turn, and debating how long it’d be before they could go back inside and warm up a bit.

“Oh, look out,” he said, and Crowley looked up to see Madame Tracy picking her way across the grass towards them, her shawl billowing out behind her like a superhero’s cape. Not that many superheroes would opt for the particular shade of acid green, Crowley thought.

“Here,” she said, “anyone want a bonbon?”

She produced a bag from inside the layers of her outfit and Aziraphale made a big show of accepting before diving in for a pink confection. Crowley shook his head. Last thing he needed was Satan on his case for appearing on camera with that lot stuck in his teeth. He could already hear him: _did you specifically want people to think you’d just devoured a baby?_

“Poor Sargent Shadwell,” Madame Tracy said. She jerked her head at where Shadwell was pacing in front of the camera, waving his arms to illustrate, Crowley presumed, the flames that had very nearly engulfed him. “Who knew jam was that flammable?”

“Everyone,” Crowley said. “I mean sugar’s well known for catching, isn’t it?”

Madame Tracy sighed. “You’d think they’d give him marks for effort, after he went to all that trouble.”

Crowley had seen Shadwell’s _effort_ on his way out of the tent, and even as a man who’d been accused of snacking on human organs he found the sight of the blackened, still slightly smouldering jam unappealing. “Maybe he’ll do better in the technical,” Crowley said.

“Yes,” Aziraphale said. “He seems like a very—” Shadwell’s voice rose, carrying on the wind towards them. Crowley hoped whoever would be viewing it to add the bleeps in had a strong stomach. “—technical person.”

“I’m dreading it,” Madame Tracy said. “All that measuring and whisking and blending things. Normally I just throw things in a bowl and hope for the best.”

Shadwell stomped off across the grass and after a brief moment to pinch the bridge of her nose, the director pointed to Crowley and dispatched an assistant to come and get him. He made his way across the grass to save them the bother, offering them a wave.

“Let’s just pop you in front of the camera,” she said. “Just on that blob of spray paint if you don’t mind.”

Crowley obligingly stood on the mark.

A make-up artist appeared from nowhere to blot his nose and tousle his hair, but it was little use against the wind, and in the distance was a distinct rumble of thunder. Everyone looked towards the horizon, squinting at the blackening clouds, but refused to acknowledge it.

“Ready?”

“As ever,” Crowley said, before realising she was talking to the camera team.

They’d all sat through another excruciating video this morning on how to be interviewed, that the person asking the questions would never be heard or seen, so to paraphrase it back at the start of each of their answers. Aziraphale had taken notes again and said that sounded quite complicated and he hoped he’d remember, he didn’t want to be a bother. Crowley had reassured him that if he got it wrong they’d just ask him to do it again, it was no big deal. Standing here with the glint of the unrelenting camera half a meter away though, his blasé attitude rather eluded him. Instead of a couple of middle aged men in headphones, he imagined behind the camera the millions of people who’d watch the show, all of whom had preconceived ideas of who he was and what he was like and were ready to subject him to the harshest judgement.

“That went quite well for you,” the director said, without looking up from her clipboard.

“I mean, it’s always nice when people enjoy what you’ve made isn’t it? So yes, I think it went quite well. As well as can be expected, anyway.”

He sounded so devoid of personality, he wanted to beat his head against the lens. At some point in the past, he’d found interviews a breeze—bring them on, he’d said, and had done dozens one after the other, each with at least one killer line or revelation. Of course that was before he was sober. It was a little harder to be interesting without a bottle of Jack Daniel’s swishing around his veins.

“Were you expecting it to go that well?”

“To be honest, no I wasn’t expecting to do so well. I was very nervous at the start.”

“Why was that?”

“I’m a big fan of the show,” Crowley said. “It’s _the_ tent. Quite intimidating to actually stand where Nadiya stood, to tread the same path as someone like Ruby.”

The director looked up from her clipboard as if finally he’d said something worthy of her attention. “Haven’t you played on some of the biggest stages in the world?”

“A hundred thousand screaming rock fans have got nothing on Mary Berry. You’re headlining Glastonbury, if you really mess it up they’ll just cut it out for TV. But here you’re one dropped egg away from disaster and there’s no one to rely on but yourself. That’s—well it feels risky.”

The director smiled. “How are you feeling about the technical?”

“Well the technical is always a tricky beast isn’t it? But I’ve had a look at the competition now, I’ve had a word with the oven, got my eye in,” Crowley said, “so the nerves have dwindled a little, but there’s some strong contenders and you never know what Paul and Mary will throw at you.”

“Who do you think are your strongest competitors?”

“Anathema is a dark horse. She’s very precise—could do well. And Aziraphale has obviously got a knack for it—those decorations looked incredible. Of course Sargent Shadwell could incinerate us all before we get that far.”

The director looked at the camera man. “You good?”

At his nod, she thanked Crowley and waved him back to the others.

“You looked terribly professional,” Aziraphale said, as Crowley re-joined the group. “I fear I came across as quite a daft old brush.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,” Crowley said. “Besides, everyone hates doing interviews.”

“Oh, do they? I thought perhaps it was just me. I’m not used to it. I’m rather more used to a scenario where I say something and then everybody else just stands and sings.”

“Same,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale looked at him, aghast to think they had anything in common, before softening into a small smile.

* * *

The inside of the tent when they returned smelled like a combination of burnt jam and cleaning products, and they all filed in pretending not to notice. Each station had been filled with a selection of bowls and containers stuffed with the same ingredients, and Crowley surveyed them out of the corner of his eye, trying to match them to a recipe, while the judges arranged themselves to deliver the instructions for the technical challenge.

Overhead, a distant rumble of thunder rolled. Anathema and Newt both looked at the roof of the tent, but only Newt muttered, “You don’t think that big pole would conduct lightening, do you?”

“Ok everyone,” the director said. “Ready to roll?”

There was a murmur of general assent, the production team scattered, and Shadwell stood to attention, throwing a wooden spoon at Newt and telling him to “Straighten up, laddy.”

Sue waited until it had fallen to the floor and Newt had stopped grimacing from the impact to his shoulder before launching into her speech. “Next up in our advent of terror, our countdown to calamity, our descent into festive madness,” she said, “is the technical challenge. Our judges have pooled their considerable knowledge to pick out a seasonal classic that will test your baking prowess and your decorating dexterity. We would like you to make a Buche de Noel.”

“Ah oui,” Mel said. “La Buche de Noel, une gateau symbolique qu l’on prepare chez tous les patissierres de France, a l’occasion de la fete de Noel.”

“Dating from the nineteenth century, this festive favourite is also called the Yule Log,” Sue offered, “and is traditionally severed following midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. In front of you, you will find all the instructions you need. And they are in English, by the way. We wouldn’t be that cruel to you.”

Newt sighed in relief.

“Any tips, judges?”

“Don’t be afraid to give your arms a workout on this one,” Paul said.

“Right. We’ll be able to see who spends a lot of time beating,” Sue said. “Good to know.”

“Everybody ready?” Mel said. “Trois, deux, un, bake!”

They herded the judges out, and Crowley flipped his recipe card. Yule Log. He could hardly believe his luck. He scanned the page:

_ Yule Log _

_4 egg yolks_

_100g caster sugar_

_65g flour_

_40g cocoa powder_

_2 tablespoons melted butter_

_3 egg whites_

_Chocolate Butter Cream_

_1 teaspoon instant coffee_

_1 teaspoon hot water_

_blanched almonds_

_angelica_

_candied cherries_

_green sugar_

_ Method _

_Preheat oven._

_Rinse the mixing bowl with hot water and wrap a hot wet towel around the base._

_Combine the egg yolks and sugar and beat until the mixture has doubled in volume._

_Fold in the flour and cocoa and the butter, which should be cooled._

_Fold in the beaten egg whites, gently but thoroughly._

_Butter a small, rimmed baking sheet and dust with flour._

_Pour the batter into it. Bake._

_Spread a damp towel on table._

_Run a knife around the edge of the baked cake and turn the tray upside down on the towel, leaving the pan on top of the cake until it is cool._

_Make the buttercream and add to it the dissolved instant coffee._

_Spread the cake with the butter cream and roll it up like a Swiss roll._

_Place seam side down and cut off both ends diagonally._

_Put the remaining butter cream in a pastry bag fitted with a flat cannulated tip._

_Pipe the cream over the surface of the cake to give the appearance of bark._

_Decorate._

Easy enough. Crowley had made half a dozen of these, as well as a couple of things that used a similar technique. Were he the kind of person who’d enter a Swiss roll contest at a local fete, he felt sure he would’ve walked away with a rosette—his were notable for their tight swirls, not to mention the weeks he’d spent perfecting his Arctic Roll in a fit of nostalgia. He glanced over to the bench next to him, expecting to find Aziraphale chuckling in pleased surprise too. Instead, he was leaning on the counter with his head on his hand, staring at the paper and repeating the words to himself as if they were in a different language.

Crowley frowned. How could a vicar not have made a Yule log? He shook his head and told himself to focus, turning the oven on and setting the dial to the same temperature he’d use for a Swiss roll. He rinsed the bowl and set it up with the towel as instructed before measuring the butter out and setting it on the stove to melt. He turned his attention to separating the eggs, just catching Aziraphale craning to see what he was doing.

He adjusted his position so Aziraphale had a better view and mixed the egg yolks and sugar together, monitoring the consistency closely. Remembering what Paul had said about a workout he beat them for a good five minutes, casting a gaze around the tent as he did so.

The sky beyond the windows had darkened, draping everyone in an eerie, stormy purple. Shadwell was throwing things in the general direction of the food mixer, shooting asides at the camera lingering in front of him that there was nothing wrong with the all-in-one method and anyone who thought different was a pansy. Anathema was poking at a pan and wondering why the contents wasn’t melting (she hadn’t turned the stove on) and Madame Tracy was engaged in a conversation with Sue about some of her 80s indiscretions as she cracked the eggs into a bowl and then fished the bits of shell out with her nails.

Crowley looked at Aziraphale last. Like Crowley, he had started mixing, but there was none of his jovial whistling and humming and he looked over at Crowley as if for confirmation he was doing the right thing every few seconds.

Crowley took the butter off the stove to cool, poured the egg whites into the mixer and switched the machine on, watching them froth up. They seemed well on their way, so he slid the recipe card closer and read through the next few steps to make sure they were what he was expecting.

_Fold in the flour and cocoa and the butter, which should be cooled._

His instinct was to add the butter first and then fold the flour and cocoa in; he glanced across at Aziraphale. He was apparently dealing with the same dilemma, looking at the glass jar of flour as if it might inspire him.

“Which way you going?” Crowley said. “Flour first?”

“No cheating,” Aziraphale hissed, glancing around the tent for the cameras. Having ascertained none were pointing in his direction at that particular moment, however, he met Crowley’s eye surreptitiously. “You know I’m quite undecided.”

“You do flour, I’ll do butter, then at least one of us is right?”

Aziraphale considered it for a moment before nodding.

Crowley added the now cool butter and a spoonful of flour, grabbing a spatula to fold the mixture over on itself.

“How’s it look?” Aziraphale asked.

“Decent,” Crowley replied. “Sponge like.”

Aziraphale nodded, turning his attention to his bowl. “Gently but thoroughly,” he said. “What on Earth does that mean?”

“No lumps of egg white,” Crowley said. “They’ll show up on the cake, it being dark and all.”

Aziraphale’s eyes lit up. “Oh, right.”

Crowley gently—but thoroughly—folded in the egg whites, trying to do as few folds as possible in order to preserve the airiness of the sponge, which would allow him to roll it successfully.

Above, lightening crackled, illuminating everyone like a strobe. A crash of thunder accompanied it and while everyone else _ooh_ ed in surprise, Aziraphale’s gaze shot to the ceiling as if it were divine retribution for talking to Crowley about his sponge.

There wasn’t time to lose, however. Crowley dusted a thin, rectangular baking tin with flour before pouring the mixture in, smoothing the top with a flat knife to get a good finish. He slid it into the oven and closed the door, crouching in front of it for a second to will it to rise well. There was no cooking time listed, so he set the timer for ten minutes. Sponges this thin took hardly any time at all to become dry and brittle and the last thing he wanted to do was present Mary and Paul with something with a massive crack down it.

Another flash of lightening lit up the tent, along with a clap of thunder that seemed to shake the ground. Newt wailed. Anathema shushed him and quoted the number of people who’d been killed in lightning strikes in the last decade, which he didn’t find nearly as reassuring as she was obviously expecting he would.

Madame Tracy clung to her mixer while Shadwell bellowed, “What good’ll that do you? It’s a thunder storm not a bleedin’ rogue meringue!”

Aziraphale was pale, nerves radiating from him as he gripped a towel and dusted off the work surface. Noticing Crowley’s attention, he attempted a smile. “God doing a bit of furniture rearranging, I see.”

“Hmm.”

For something to do, Crowley made the buttercream. The thunder continued, clap after boom after clap, rain adding to the mix with a cacophony like bullets bouncing off the plastic windows of the tent. The air felt leaden with gloom and one of the production assistants muttered about how on Earth they were going to make this look festive in post.

With a forced grin, Mel descended on Crowley, the accompanying camera man wheeling around to get a shot of his hands. “How we doing over here, then?” she said.

“Great,” Crowley said, although the words were mostly obscured by the thunder. “Sponge is in, buttercream is looking—”

He lifted the bowl to the camera and gave a thumbs up, which seemed better than continuing to raise his voice.

“I saw you and the good vicar having a debate about flour or butter first,” Mel said.

Crowley lifted an eyebrow.

“Which way did you decide to go, in the end?”

“Butter,” Crowley said.

“Will it make much of a difference?”

“We'll see. Might be a Mary double bluff and make no difference whatsoever.”

"Minx."

"Exactly."

Crowley’s timer went off, and with an apologetic grimace he ducked down to peer into the oven. The sponge just crested the top of the tin and didn’t look to have developed any kind of egregious peak. He retrieved it swiftly, setting it on a board and touching the top, aware of the camera homing in on his hands again as he did so.

“Tell us what you’re doing?” Mel said, the LEDs on her jumper catching on the corner of the bench as she leant in.

“I’m just checking it’s done,” Crowley said. He’d gone over this with Satan—any time they ask anything about baking, go into detail. We’re looking to leverage an appearance on a cooking show out of this at least. “You want it to feel like it’s resisting just a little, so you know it’s fully risen.”

“Right.”

“I like to check several points, not just the middle. Especially with an unfamiliar oven. They all circulate differently, you know. Their own personality.”

“You’re quite into this, aren’t you?” Mel said. “I wouldn’t have guessed.”

“What can I say?” Crowley said, with what he hoped was a winning grin. “Staying in hotels for half my life gave me an appreciation for home cooking.”

Across the aisle, there was a clatter as Aziraphale deposited his sponge onto the stovetop. “Sorry,” he said, “butterfingers.”

“How’s it look?” Crowley said. Another camera swung to Aziraphale to catch both sides of the conversation.

“Passable,” Aziraphale said, his cheery tone not really matching the harassed look on his face. “Yours?”

“Seems al—”

There was a boom of thunder, a crack of lightning, and all the lights went out.

In the moments that followed, chaos ran, unfettered, through the tent.

Newt fell to the carpet as if he was under fire, wrestling with the oven door, which he believed had locked itself with his cake trapped inside until Anathema explained that doors on ovens are mechanical not electrical.

Madame Tracy threw her hands into the air and called upon some kind of goddess to save them all, while Sargent Shadwell made the sign of the cross incorrectly and tried to get Newt to agree to swap cakes with him, as he was older and had fewer opportunities left to win things.

Aziraphale intoned a prayer, casting uncertain glances at the roof of the tent as rain battered it, and Crowley threw a towel over his buttercream in case they were forced to stop.

The production team huddled and all shouted an opinion about what to do next, the result of which was them all being herded outside and told to aim for the main house and then about-faced and herded back _into_ the tent when the sky flashed brilliant white with a bolt of lightning that wasn’t nearly far enough away that incinerating a minor celebrity could be ruled out.

“Well this has livened things up,” Crowley said, as they clustered in what he supposed passed for the doorway. Rain was beginning to puddle; he hoped it wouldn’t ruin his boots.

“I was quite enjoying the simple stress of the baking contest, thank you,” Aziraphale returned, peering out into the gloom. “Gosh that is a lot of rain. I hope it doesn’t flood.”

“Can’t you have a word?”

Aziraphale met Crowley’s gaze with a terse expression. “Have _a word_?”

“With the big man. Or woman. Being a vicar and all, they might listen to you. Turn it off for a bit.”

“It’s not like having God on speed-dial so I can make personal requests.”

“Then what’s the point?” Crowley mumbled. “Seems to me you devote your life to God, the least you should get is a little input into the local weather.”

Aziraphale tutted and straightened his shirt.

“Ok, everyone,” Sue said, “the lightning appears to have taken out the local substation. I assure you that right now someone is screaming down the phone at a minimum wage call centre employee who can’t do anything about it. So for now, if everyone could just stay calm and keep away from any trees that look like they might be about to get struck and explode.”

“What about the contest?” Newt said. “I was really rather hoping this cake would actually cook.”

“We’ve stopped the clock—we’ll pick up where we left off when the storm passes.”

A grumble rolled through the group, although there seemed no real alternative.

Crowley found a corner, balled his apron up to use as a pillow against the fridge, and settled in for a nap.

* * *

“Well, it’s been quite a day, hasn’t it,” Aziraphale said. He regarded the sky—which had dulled from leaden to merely ashy—and shot a glance at Crowley.

Crowley interpreted it as an invitation to join him in a stroll away from the tent, where Newt was staring into space like he’d been through something deeply traumatic and Shadwell was ranting about why things needed decorating when the point was to eat them.

“Quite,” Crowley said. “Not often you come that close to seeing a _Blue Peter_ presenter struck by lightning.”

“I’m still not sure how you managed to sleep through all that.”

Crowley lifted one shoulder in half a shrug. “Used to it,” he said. “On tour I’d grab forty winks through a pyro rehearsal. Fell asleep in a flight case once and woke up in San Francisco.”

He left out how he’d come to fall in there. After all, no one who woke a sleeping person as gently and tentatively as Aziraphale had done needed to hear about the nightmare that was imbibing most of a case of tequila and then waking up two days later in a locked box that looked, to the suddenly woken and desperately thirsty, like the inside of a coffin.

They came to a halt next to the Bentley, the tires of which were stationed in four puddles, all an almost a perfect replica of each other.

“You did _very_ well this afternoon,” Aziraphale said.

Crowley shrugged. It wasn’t that he hadn’t relished coming first in the Yule Log technical, more that the way Aziraphale looked at him made him want to disappear into the mud. “Could’ve just as easily been you.”

Aziraphale shifted his weight. He’d been absolutely delighted with second place, and had clutched at Crowley’s arm for the big reveal even though they both knew by process of elimination what was coming.

After the judges’ comments, both of them had been called over to do a piece to camera from underneath a large golf umbrella. Crowley tried to evade questions about how it felt to be the front runner and explained that he’d got lucky with a recipe he knew, while Aziraphale beamed at him and talked about how he was just glad it all went reasonably well, and that he believed it may all still be to play for and it never did to count one’s chickens.

“I fear Sargent Shadwell deciding to just fold his sponge in half like more of a sandwich was the defining moment,” Aziraphale said.

“He could’ve thrown some sugar on it, made a bit of an effort.”

“I think he gave all of his to Madame Tracy.”

Crowley thought back to the log next to his. Where his had been delicately dusted around the base with green sugar as if to suggest just a hint of moss or lichen, hers had been positively drenched in the stuff, more resembling the leg of a Grinch costume. “Oh, that explains it.”

“And poor Anathema, rolling hers the wrong way.”

“Lot of effort to roll a sponge diagonally.” Aziraphale murmured his agreement. Crowley gestured to the car. “Shall we?”

Inside, the windows of the Bentley had fogged up. Crowley turned the heater on to clear them and flicked the stereo on. Aziraphale jolted on the seat beside him as Diana Ross elbowed her way between them with a baseline from 1973.

“You weren’t joking about enjoying the stylings of Motown,” Aziraphale said, considering the tape case propped on the dashboard.

Crowley’s handwritten song titles stared back and for a second, Crowley felt compelled to shove the tape out of view, as if it weren’t the highlights of his extensive record collection on show, but his own soul. “Diana Ross’s post-Supremes work is much overlooked,” he said, aiming for the casual superiority of someone who knows they’ve made a mix of rare gems for connoisseurs, “but contains some of the greatest disco-soul moments ever committed to vinyl. Or—in this case—tape.”

“Is this what your music sounded like?”

Crowley snorted, but the look on Aziraphale’s face said it had been a genuine question. “No—no not really. We were more about the—you know—murderously loud drums and anarchy.”

Aziraphale nodded, but whatever he was picturing, Crowley doubted he’d fully conveyed what it was like to witness the Hell Hounds at their peak. Few had survived the debauchery of the early tours. He barely had.

They drove through the dark back to the hotel, chattering about the day and the way Anathema had accidentally insulted Mary’s recipe and Sue had tried to smooth things over with a joke. By the time they arrived, Crowley felt like they’d been friends for years.

The hotel was quiet, the lights in the windows throwing out an inviting yellow glow but no crowds of people milling around the frontage. In the dining room on the front, several couples were dining and as he pulled into the carpark he thought he glimpsed Anathema and Newt hiding inexpertly behind two menus.

The Bentley juddered to a halt. Aziraphale fumbled for his seatbelt before remembering he wasn’t wearing one, and offered Crowley a smile of gratitude as they both got out, Aziraphale stretching his neck and rubbing at a sore spot on his shoulder.

“Ok?” Crowley asked.

“I think I twinged something slicing all that angelica.”

“We could… have a walk around the garden?” Crowley said. Despite the storm, the evening sky had cleared and the stars popped between the clouds as if eager for company.

“That would be lovely.”

They set off down the side of the hotel to where the terrace, illumined by its fairy lights, sat, a little soggier than it had been the previous evening when it played host to drunken wedding guests. The grounds comprised an informal garden which sloped down to a little stream that at some point ran over the water wheel Crowley had careened past on his way in. He imagined it might be a nice spot in the summer, the tinkling of the water and the glint of the sun, but the rain-splashed grass smelt fresh and calm after the ruckus of the day. “I never imagined,” he said, “that baking could be this stressful.”

It wasn’t entirely true. Obviously he’d seen previous contestants nibble their fingernails to nothing and cry over split cream. He’d borne witness to prayers offered to baking sheets and watched breakdowns over bread rolls in HD. He knew it happened. He was just unprepared for it happening to him.

“Everyone wants to do well I suppose,” Aziraphale said, tucking his hands behind his back.

“I’ll settle for not looking entirely foolish,” Crowley muttered, Satan’s laughter ringing in his ears.

They strolled along the flowerbeds, where sodden geraniums were trying their best to stay upright and wallflowers emitted their sweet smell into the crisp air, trees dripping on them from their rain bent leaves, the smell of greenery and damp bark rising to meet them.

“I should thank you,” Aziraphale said.

“Thank me?”

“For your assistance. I hadn’t the foggiest how to make a Yule Log. I’d have been quite lost without you acting so confidently beside me.”

“Nonsense,” Crowley said. “You’d have been fine if all hell hadn’t been breaking loose. No one can concentrate under those circumstance. Ask me, they should’ve postponed until tomorrow, give everyone a fair shot at it.”

Aziraphale murmured in a way that made it impossible to tell whether or not he actually agreed. “Nice to have something new to add to the repertoire anyway,” Aziraphale said. “Although I’m not sure how my parishioners would feel about eating one of those.”

“Bit pagan?”

“Bit Catholic,” Aziraphale said, turning to face him just slightly, like a character in a period drama trying to convey more than they felt at liberty to say out loud. “And they can be a tad old fashioned. A nouvelle cuisine restaurant opened in the village and someone mistook some artful drizzling of jus for a pentagram.”

“What were they trying to summon? A lemon?”

“Who knows, but seeing me in there sampling the tasting menu certainly set some tongues wagging, I can tell you. I had to take out an advert in the local paper to declare I wasn’t possessed by evil spirits, just enjoying a very tasty confit of duck.”

Crowley threw his head back in a chortle. “The perils of public life, eh?” he said. They rounded an old oak tree and headed down towards the rushing noise of the swollen stream. “Not sure I get on with it, nouvelle cuisine. All those tiny little morsels awash in a swirl of foam, decorated with some kind of edible flower that cost the same as the average mortgage.” He watched amusement twitch on the corner of Aziraphale’s mouth. “Used to drive my bandmates mad. Especially at award shows. Have you any idea how long the average award show goes on? You’d think that knowing people would be engaged in extensive stretches of pointless sitting, they’d just whack out chips—but it’s all tiny stack of pancakes the size of a five pence piece or barely a mouthful of crushed peas arranged into a cube. Occasionally we’d all hide out in the toilets and send out for a pizza.”

Aziraphale plucked a leaf from a shrub as they passed. “Must’ve been exciting, though. All those famous faces.” He glanced at Crowley askance. “Or maybe not if you’re one of them.”

“Hardly,” Crowley said. “Besides, aren’t you some kind of Twitter sensation? People retweeting your sermons and liking your selfies or whatever it is people do on Twitter.”

“Mostly I tweet about cheese,” Aziraphale said. “But it just goes to show that people’s appetite for the word of the Lord hasn’t waned, the method of delivery just needs updating in order to reach them.”

“Bible verse is the new wine,” Crowley muttered.

They rounded the flowerbed, and just the slightest drizzle began to fall, landing on Crowley’s sleeve like a smattering of tiny diamonds. The grass was becoming increasingly slippery underfoot, but he didn’t want to turn back, to say goodnight, to go back to his hotel room and its shiny purple duvet and pore over the recipe for what would be his final bake. “That why you wanted to do Bake Off?” he said, gingerly stepping between two divots in the lawn that had become mud baths. “To spread the word to the masses? Use your sticky bun recipe to get a foot in the door and then hit them with a couple of verses from Luke?”

Aziraphale swallowed and focused on a point on the horizon, where the cottages in the distance could only be discerned by the lights of their windows. “It was suggested that the dwindling numbers attending my actual services were disappointing to the higher ups. I thought it might be a nice way to show that the church has moved with the times.”

Crowley surveyed Aziraphale’s outfit. _Moving with the times_ was the last phrase that came to mind, unless _the times_ had ceased to advance sometime in the 19th Century. He was about to make a joke to that effect, that no-one sporting braces and a waistcoat as everyday wear could be mistaken for keeping up with trends when Aziraphale frowned. “I do hope it wasn’t the wrong decision,” he said. “There’s a lot riding on it and—” He snuck a glance at Crowley. “—as you said, I hope I won’t appear foolish on television. They won’t be very pleased if I don’t show us in a good light.”

“I don’t think you’ve done anything to disapprove of,” Crowley said.

“Well that’s very kind, but—between you and me, my position is rather tenuous at the moment. They’re looking for any excuse to ship me off to a tiny parish in the middle of nowhere. Archbishop Gabriel has been most insistent lately that the numbers—bottoms on pews as he puts it—are all that matters, and rather than bothering with trying to get people to come to the church because they want to, I should look to some of the evangelical preachers in America and embrace their style to attract the crowds.”

Crowley grimaced. “What, resort to fear mongering and faith healing?”

Aziraphale pressed his lips together and nodded. “And worse. He thinks condemning…certain groups might go some way to _drive footfall_.” He glanced at Crowley nervously, leaving Crowley in no doubt which groups were in question.

“You’re not going to?”

“Well I don’t want to,” Aziraphale said. “But if this doesn’t work, I may have no choice in the matter. I already received a warning for tweeting a picture of a rainbow.”

Crowley thrust his hands into his pockets. He’d never met Archbishop Gabriel and probably never would, but already he wanted to use his face as a piñata. “Why is it that every time progress rolls forwards, there’s always someone who wants to roll it back centuries for their own advantage?”

Aziraphale didn’t answer.

Perhaps there just wasn’t anything to say about it. The weight of it sagged his shoulders and creased his face, though, taking Crowley’s insides with it.

Crowley understood all too well what it was like to be out of favour with those who had power over you. He’d spent most of the last decade trying to negotiate his way out of a contract he signed while he was too drunk to spell his own name, accruing regrets and powerlessness on an almost daily basis. He knew better than anyone what it was like to have threats hanging over you, to have to toe a line you didn’t believe in and pretend to be someone you weren’t. It was like being in a prison with a ceiling that lowered a few inches everyday: the threat was never quite close enough to touch, but encroached in increments, ever present, with no relief.

He was about to say something about it, that regardless of what Aziraphale’s bosses said, the Bible was very clear on what was most important and it had absolutely naff all to do with people’s sexuality or gender, when one of Aziraphale’s feet shot out from underneath him.

“Oh—oh no—”

He grasped at Crowley’s arm, flinging his other hand out to steady himself, but all that did was throw his balance off even more, and with a squelchy splosh, he hit the ground with a final, startled, “Oh!”

Crowley couldn’t help the laughter that sprang forth. The combination of Aziraphale sitting so primly on the grass with mud splattered up his impeccable trousers and the look of indignation on his face—as if gravity itself had betrayed him—had him almost doubled over. “Are you ok?” he said.

“Nothing broken,” Aziraphale said, and glanced around for somewhere to lean to get up.

Crowley extended his hand.

Aziraphale looked from him to it before taking it and allowing Crowley to pull him to his feet. His shoes gave no purchase whatsoever on the muddy grass and he slid like someone doing a Bambi impression until Crowley clasped both his arms to steady him, holding him still, something warm and comforting burbling in his chest like milk rising to boil.

When Aziraphale looked at him, he realised with a tumble of his stomach how close they were. Aziraphale’s breath tickled his chin and underneath Crowley’s fingers, the muscles in his arms clenched and then relaxed.

Crowley saw, in a rush, kissing him. Taking Aziraphale’s face in his hands and sampling the warmth of his mouth, the way Aziraphale might hold onto his wrist to keep him there, stroking tiny circles of encouragement on the back of his hand.

“Er—”

“Yes—er—well—that’s—”

Crowley released him, watching as Aziraphale straightened his coat and brushed the front down. He twisted, surveying the seat of his trousers with dismay. “Oh look at that, it’s soaked right through.”

“Are you trying to tell me,” Crowley said, “that you’ve got a soggy bottom?”

“Well _really_ ,” Aziraphale huffed, but when he looked up again, his eyes were grinning, delighted.


	3. Chapter 3

Crowley perused the offerings in the green room—a portacabin with the words ‘green room’ printed and laminated on A4 paper—before selecting a black coffee. It wasn’t as strong as he usually made for himself, but it warmed his hands against the brisk October wind that whipped around the set. Against a backdrop of trees, pieces to camera were being filmed, and he sauntered over to listen just as Newt was finishing up, Aziraphale loitering in the wings.

Crowley couldn’t tell what the question had been, but Newt’s face was pure panic and his voice hysterical as he said, “yes of course I’ll be making my own jam. Wouldn’t dream of anything else.” He shot a desperate glance at Crowley. “I’m supposed to make jam in two hours? Is that even humanly possible?”

Crowley twitched his face into something approaching a smile. “Of course, nothing to it,” he said, before turning to Aziraphale. “Morning,” he said, taking a sip of his coffee.

He’d spent the night in and out of sleep, going over his recipe, but in between notes about how long precisely to beat his cake batter for and how to leave the cream for his truffles at room temperature had floated Aziraphale, the twinkle in his eyes and the way the corners of his mouth creased before he told a joke.

“You really think he can manage jam?”

“I wouldn’t bet on Newt being able to open a jar of jam, let alone make his own,” Crowley said, “but hearing that would only dent his confidence.” He took another sip of his coffee. Aziraphale’s hair looked very soft this morning, framing his face so nicely it practically begged to be touched. “How’s your derrière?”

Aziraphale lifted an eyebrow. “I will endure.”

Crowley watched as Aziraphale took his place in front of the camera, smoothing down the front of his coat and making sure his dog collar was straight. Despite his lack of experience, he had the face of daytime TV down to a tee, the easy smile, the permanent joviality, as he answered questions about how he’d enjoyed the contest and yesterday’s unexpected drama with the weather. “How do I feel about going into the final round?” Aziraphale said. His face creased in a frown as he considered it. “Well, I’m nervous, obviously, but also quite excited to see if I can pull my design off.”

“And what are you making?”

“For the final round, I’ll be making a heavenly sponge cake, topped with peaches and cream flavoured icing and decorated with a host of angels.”

“And what will those be made of?”

“Oh!” Aziraphale said, as if he’d just remembered, “truffles,” he said. “A little stack of truffles.”

The director nodded. “Who do you think will win?”

“It would be a foolish person who bet against Anthony at this point I think,” Aziraphale said. “He’s really very accomplished and deeply knowledgeable about baking. Whatever he’s working on for the Show Stopper I’m sure we’re all in for a treat.”

“You’ve struck up quite a friendship, we hear,” the director said.

“I daresay he finds me a frightful stick in the mud, but he is a dear,” Aziraphale said, with the slightest glance in Crowley’s direction. “I tried one of his cupcakes and they were absolutely divine. As fine a thing as I’ve had in all my years.”

The tops of Crowley’s ears went hot. He missed the rest of Aziraphale’s answers, repeating the word _dear_ over and over inside his head, and had to be called twice for his own turn in front of the camera.

“Final round,” the director said, “and you’re the favourite to win. How’s that feel?”

“It’s flattering people think I’m the favourite,” Crowley said, adding a shrug, “but it’s baking. Anything can happen. You’re only ever one uncooperative egg away from disaster, one misread instruction away from failure.”

In his post-rehab days, there’d been equal frustration and comfort in that, the surrendering of control to fate or destiny or sheer dumb luck, the acceptance that sometimes things just didn’t work out, however hard you tried or wanted them to.

“Reverend Aziraphale was telling us you two have become quite close.”

“Was he?” Crowley pictured Satan’s face. _A vicar, Crowley? You’ve become friends with a vicar?_ “Maybe I’m just trying to get the inside scoop on what he’s making so I can figure out how to beat him.”

It was a joke, but as soon as he said it, Crowley wanted to take it back. He daren’t look over to where Aziraphale was standing with his hands neatly clasped behind his back, watching him say it in case Aziraphale had taken him seriously and disappointment in him was writ there.

“Tell us about your Show Stopper?”

Crowley fixed the director with a direct gaze. He’d been dreading this question so much, he’d sat in his kitchen and pretended the biscuit tin was interviewing him, going over ever possible answer and recording himself on his phone to compare and contrast. Until this moment, he hadn’t a hundred percent decided which way to go, but the thought of Aziraphale watching him clinched it.

“It’s a recipe I perfected a while ago, based on a book I picked up on tour. It’s the first really tricky thing I learned to bake, represents my—overcoming of—certain things. That’s a sort of celebration, isn’t it.”

The director gestured for him to go on, and Crowley cleared his throat. “It’s no secret I had a problem with alcohol,” he said. His insides felt soft and gooey as dough and to his side, he heard a sharp intake of breath that could only belong to Aziraphale. “I started baking after I went to rehab. I needed something to keep me busy, out of trouble. When I made this, that’s when I realised I never wanted to go through rehab again. I was done for good. It was an epiphany, I guess you’d call it. When I made this successfully for the first time, I knew–” His mouth tensed into a line. “I knew I was going to be ok. It’s a modern take on a black forest truffle cake, with raspberry glazed truffles and frosted forest fruits.”

“I hope it goes well.”

“Me too,” Crowley said, and as he walked away, Aziraphale fell perfectly into step beside him, his elbow bumping against Crowley’s, and not a single word about it on his lips.

* * *

The atmosphere inside the tent was tense. Although perhaps that was Crowley projecting the feeling between his own shoulder blades outwards. He adjusted the position of the wooden spoon caddy on his work station and double-checked the flour was where it was supposed to be. The holly from his crown dug into his forehead and he pushed it back, trying to get a casual look at his own hair in the reflection from the bottom of a ladle to check his fringe still looked ok. At least his choice of headwear wasn’t bobbing like Shadwell’s mistletoe.

He glanced over at Aziraphale, who was finishing up a cup of tea underneath a tinsel halo, the likes of which Crowley hadn’t seen since his own nativity at school.

“Right everyone,” Sue said. “The end is almost in sight, and all that stands between you and certain victory is a pesky little challenge we like to call the Show Stopper. This round is all about giving it your all, showing off as many skills as possible, and wowing the judges with the breadth and depth of your culinary knowledge.”

“You’ll have two hours,” Mel said, “to bake us something fit for a Christmas party, something that gets everybody in the mood for celebration. Traditional or modern, the choice is yours—the only stipulation from the judges is that your cake should be as tasty as it is eye-catching. Everybody ready?”

From beneath his oversized elf hat, Newt looked like he was about to object, but Sue ignored him.

“Ready, steady, festive bake!”

Crowley leapt into action, turning the dial on the oven to the correct temperature and placing his baking tin on a sheet of greaseproof paper, drawing around the tin before cutting out the shape to line the bottom. He’d got this whole manoeuvre down to under a minute when he practiced in his own kitchen, and he needed every second of spare time to get the decorations just how he wanted them. He grabbed the whipping cream from the fridge he and Aziraphale shared, and took the lid off so it could come up to temperature.

The first steps of the cake were simple enough: melt together chocolate and butter over a bowl of simmering water; separate a couple of eggs and beat the yolks until they resembled a foam. The tricky bit was not being impatient, waiting for the chocolate to cool enough to mix the eggs in, but Crowley had plenty of experience making work for nervous hands.

While he waited for the chocolate to cool, he attended to the fruit for the top, selecting glistening red currents, shiny plump blackberries, the fattest blueberries, and of course a small handful of cranberries. He laid out his selections for later, before returning to the chocolate mixture and stirring in the sugar, followed by the eggs. “Don’t you dare curdle,” he muttered, “not after I made an embarrassing speech about you.”

He stirred in a couple of teaspoons of his own cherry syrup and some ground almonds. The resulting mixture smelled like a chocolate take on a Cherry Bakewell, which was one of his favourite things about it.

Next up was making a meringue mix, and while the kitchen mixer whirred away, working on stiff, glossy peaks, he chanced a glance at Aziraphale. He’d rolled his sleeves up and was folding egg whites into his own cake mix at a leisurely pace, one eye on Mel as she backed away from where Shadwell had dropped two eggs on the floor, declared “five second rule!” and ducked down to scrape them off the carpet and into a bowl. He met Crowley’s eye with something approaching alarm and Crowley returned his raised eyebrows, half picturing what it might be like to bake with Aziraphale under other circumstances, to hear him natter about what the shops were like when he picked up the ingredients, to hear about the parishioners he’d encountered and what the weather was like on the walk back.

Crowley swallowed, stopped the mixer and spooned a dollop of the meringue into the chocolate and cherry mixture, stirring it in to loosen it. Once he was satisfied, he brought the bowl over and set about folding in the rest, as slowly as his twitchy nerves could stand.

He glanced at the clock. Normally this part took him nine minutes and there were almost ten gone already. He scolded himself for letting his mind wander too far into daydreams, and returned his attention to the bowl in his hands, folding the egg whites in and trying to keep as much air in the mixture as possible. His first few attempts at this recipe had been far too heavy-handed and resulted in a cake that was both dense and dry. He didn’t want a repeat of that on national television.

Once it was nicely combined, he poured the lot into the cake tin. He crouched down to slide it onto the middle shelf of the oven and set a timer for half an hour. In order to reduce the chance of it sinking or cracking on the top, he needed to not open the door before it was ready, which would test anybody’s willpower.

He went back to the berries he’d selected, whipped more egg yolks and combined it with fine caster sugar, dipping each into the mixture and setting them to dry so they’d sparkle like frost in sunlight.

After checking his timer again, he assembled the ingredients for his truffles, measuring whipping cream into a bowl along with more of his own cherry syrup, melting more chocolate, and combing it all with organic butter from a specific farm that fed the cows only the freshest grass and produced the creamiest, freshest butter as a result.

The cocoa powder he added was imported direct from South America, and the darkest and most indulgent Crowley had ever tasted. His truffles were so rich, they melted on the tongue and their taste lingered long after the final bite had been consumed. His plan was to cover them in raspberry mirror glaze, so they’d look like the shiniest and most beautiful cherries, and ring the base of the cake with them. He’d seen something similar in a patisserie in Paris, had come to a dead stop in front of the window display. Having been up all night drinking flaming absinthe with the most undesirable crowd he could find only accounted for part of his reaction. His memory of how he got to the shop, how he found his hotel, how he coped with an international flight two hours later was indistinct, but he remembered those beautiful confections as if they’d been permanently doodled in his brain.

He combined the ingredients until the mixture was unctuous and shiny before taking the bowl over to the fridge and placing it on one of the shelves. Chilling it made it easier to roll, and even though his naturally cold hands gaze him an advantage, he didn’t want to risk it.

As he turned away from the fridge, he almost bumped into Aziraphale, who was standing right behind him, a smudge of cocoa powder on his cheek.

“Great minds think alike,” he said, cheerfully brandishing his own bowl, which contained a similar looking mixture.

Crowley stepped aside to let Aziraphale slide his bowl in. “How’s it going?”

“Oh, you know,” Aziraphale offered, with a flourish of his hands to suggest a general air of chaos. “Busy busy!”

“Right. Can you believe how fast—”

Crowley’s timer dinged, truncating what Crowley had been about to say about time moving differently inside the tent. Over his shoulder, he sensed the camera team swooping in to capture him and Aziraphale talking.

“That’s me,” he said, and moved away, ducking down to peer into the oven instead. Against the whir of the fan, his cake had risen to just peek above the rim of the tin.

“What d’you reckon?” Sue said, leaning on the corner of his bench and helping herself to one of his blackberries.

“Needs another minute or two.”

“You’re not going to take it out and check? Poke its bottom and all that?”

Crowley straightened up, adjusting the holly crown which was prickling against his skin. Of course he’d seen that over the years, the contestants who thought they could hear when their loaves were done when they tapped on the bottoms of them, but Crowley went by eye. “No, I’m just waiting for a little bit more rise.”

“What’s in the fridge?”

“Truffles.”

“Truffles?” Sue’s eyes lit up. “And how many of those will you be making, do you think? Will there be enough, say, for some pre-judging sampling?”

“I’ll be making at least one extra, just for you,” Crowley said, and gave her one of his most dazzling smiles, the ones he saved for the front covers of really important magazines.

Sue helped herself to a couple of blueberries, tossing them theatrically into her mouth before wiping her hands off on a tea towel. “Those were spare, weren’t they?”

Crowley laughed and nodded, waving her off as she told him they’d be back when he took the cake out. She leant on the corner of Aziraphale’s bench, poking at his icing at it lay in a bowl in a smattering of icing sugar. “And what were you putting in there to chill?” she said, nodding towards the fridge.

“Truffles,” Aziraphale said.

“You’re both making truffles?” Sue said, with exaggerated surprise as she switched her gaze between them.

“Yes I’m afraid it seemed I’ve been rather unoriginal,” Aziraphale said.

“Nonsense,” Sue said. “As far as I’m concerned, the more the merrier. It’s the Great British Truffle Off,” she said, lifting her arms in triumph.

Crowley’s timer beeped again, and he crouched by the oven, surveying his cake through the glass. It had risen a little more, and the top was just starting to darken. He daren’t leave it in any longer, and so with a deep breath, he reached for the oven gloves and opened the door.

With a waft of chocolatey steam, he retrieved his cake and set it on a chopping board to cool. The top would sag just a little, creating a well which he’d fill with cherry syrup and whipped cream peppered with the glazed fruit and chocolate curls, the glazed truffles around the base setting it off nicely and the piece de resistance, a couple more nestled in the centre.

Mel stood at the head of the tent and bellowed out a time check, causing a flurry of activity as Newt realised his cake should’ve been in the oven some twenty minutes ago. Anathema adjusted her reindeer antlers and told him to turn the temperature up fifty degrees.

Crowley mimed the steps of what he needed to do next: make the glaze, ball the truffles, glaze the truffles, whip the cream, melt some more chocolate to carve into curls, decorate.

He checked the timer. It was doable. He knew it was. It had to be.

The glaze had been one of the hardest aspects of the recipe to perfect. He’d turned out dozens—maybe even hundreds—of flat, matt ones before he got it right. It wasn’t so much a science as an art, requiring more luck than judgement and more sieving than a reasonable person had the patience for. He worked through the steps, pressing the pulped fruits through a sieve with the back of a spoon, making sure not a single seed made it through, melting the syrup with the sugar, mixing the gelatine and the lemon juice and watching it swell up.

He checked the temperature on the berry mixture before adding the gelatine. “Here, Aziraphale,” he called, “is there a prayer for this? A patron saint of mirror glaze I could ask for a blessing?”

Aziraphale—who was elbow deep in white chocolate—looked over, assessing what Crowley was doing. “Doesn’t look like you need one,” he said.

Crowley looked back at the pan. Aziraphale was right. On this occasion, it seemed luck was on his side and the resulting mixture was the sort of glossy normally only glimpsed on the manes of show ponies.

Half an hour later, he had perfectly whipped cream flavoured with cherries ready to go and melted chocolate poured on a baking tray ready for curling. The latter would benefit from chilling; he’d swap it for the truffle mixture and it could chill while he balled and glazed the truffles. He could see it already, the whole thing coming together like a beautiful ballet.

Crowley opened the fridge.

On the shelf, the two bowls sat side by side, his and Aziraphale’s. One was perfect—exactly the right consistency to ball up into neat little truffles that would take a mirror glaze so perfectly he could hardly stand it. The other hadn’t set at all, remaining a sad, gloopy mess.

Crowley stood, gaze flicking between Aziraphale’s bowl and his.

He saw victory: the bouquet of flowers Mel and Sue would hand him, the group hug, the delighted grins, the pats on his shoulder, the glowing headlines, the way Aziraphale would congratulate him, genuinely, on it. Winning the show would rehabilitate him the way little else could. He could almost taste the chat shows and the daytime TV cooking slot appearances, the book deal for a volume of his own recipes, the earnest interviews he’d do from his new place in the country where he made jam with fruit from his own trees while a loaf of granary baked in the oven.

Everything he’d planned was in reach.

All he had to do was take the bowl.

He stared at it, commanding his hands to reach out and grab it, close the fridge, and walk away as if he hadn’t noticed anything untoward.

But he couldn’t do it. His hands balled at his sides.

Maybe he could tip Aziraphale off. _Oy mate, you better take a look at those_. If he tipped Aziraphale off, that was more than enough, wasn’t it? That would give him a chance to attempt to make more. That was all that was required, surely? He didn’t need to martyr himself.

The inside of his Crowley’s head filled with last night, with Aziraphale’s face as he recounted how displeased the diocese was with him and how he’d been hoping to generate a bit of positive PR for the parish so the church generally would look upon him more favourably.

Crowley’s heart clenched. He knew what it was like to try your hardest for someone’s approval and fall between the moving goalposts they presented. He pictured Aziraphale’s face when he found the bowl, the way it would contort—just briefly—in anguish before he slipped his true feelings away behind a mask of geniality. “Well ho hum, these things happen,” he’d say, later, to the camera. “Anthony is a very deserving winner.” 

Crowley took the ruined truffle mix, rearranged the other bowl, and placed his baking tray of melted chocolate on the shelf. He took the bowl back to his bench. The camera would demand a show; it always did. He fixed his face into agonised despair, grabbed a wooden spoon, and poked forlornly at the mixture. When that didn’t attract enough attention, he fisted his hair and let out a low wail.

That did the trick.

Mel scurried over, the camera team stepping closer, sensing a story brewing. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Her concern was so earnest, Crowley almost couldn’t go through with it. But he had to. “It’s—I don’t know—it hasn’t set properly.”

Mel peered into the bowl and grimaced. “Is there nothing you can do to save it? Put it back in for a bit, maybe?”

Crowley shook his head. “If it’s not set by now it never will. I don’t know what happened. I make these all the time.”

Crowley dropped his head into his hands and rested on the counter, breathing heavily at some loose cocoa powder that may or may not stick to his face when he stood up again.

Mel rubbed soothing circles between his shoulder blades. “There there, my love,” she said. “I’m sure it’ll still taste ok.”

Crowley nodded, straightening up a little. He wondered if dabbing at his eyes with the hem of his apron would be too much. “I’d best just—” He allowed himself a lip wobble. “—get on with it I suppose.”

His stoicism got him a nod and a brief hug before Mel and the camera crew retreated a couple of steps to get some footage of him soldiering on. He made the effort to swallow a couple of times as if trying to master his emotions, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Aziraphale head to the fridge.

Some expression of confusion crossed Aziraphale’s face as he took the bowl out, but Crowley couldn’t bear to watch anymore. He busied himself with the glaze, taking it off the heat where his lack of stirring had turned it dull, a film settling on the top and transforming it into a demonic ice rink. He set it to one side and focused on his cake, piling up the whipped cream and muttering for the benefit of the production team that he’d add some extra chocolate curls and hope for the best.

He painstakingly manoeuvred his cake onto its presentation board and turned his attention to the decoration, stealing a glance at the other occupants of the tent. Anathema was concentrating fiercely on her creation, eye level with it as she rotated it on her stand and iced a complicated design that represented the tarot on the top. She’d be in with a chance, had Crowley not have overheard her telling Mary and Paul the flavourings were matcha and poppy seed, which was borderline unconscionable.

Shadwell was a nonstarter. Whatever it was supposed to be, it had caved in and raw batter was oozing out of the top like a volcano. Newt’s elf hat was covered in floury handprints and from the look of his flat cake, he’d only succeeded in getting more of the mixture on his person than in his bowl, the promised jam set completely into a saucepan which could only be presented on the side like a large, garish brooch.

Madame Tracy was tossing more glitter on her creation, this time from a distance to give it a sort of fog effect. As far as Crowley could tell, she’d done the same recipe as her cupcakes, only bigger, which got points for efficiency if nothing else.

He looked at Aziraphale last. His apron was dusted with icing sugar, his lips pursed in uncharacteristic strain as he adorned the top of his cake with a host of sugarcraft clouds and flowers. Those flowers had taken him a great chunk of the allotted time, each one painstakingly pressed into shape with a warm thumb. Dozens and dozens he’d made—seasonally appropriate hellebores and everything—dusting the tops of the petals with coloured sugar so they looked as if they were sparkling.

He balled the truffle mixture into angel-come-snowmen shapes and dipped them in white chocolate, and placed them in the centre of the flowers and clouds. If anyone else had made a cake like that, Crowley would’ve written it off as impossibly twee, but it fitted with Aziraphale so pleasingly that Crowley couldn’t mind it, or imagine anything else Aziraphale might have thought of creating.

“Five minutes,” Sue called. “You’ve got five minutes.”

Newt made a strangled noise of panic.

Shadwell uttered something that would definitely need to be bleeped.

Aziraphale ducked down to survey his cake from every angle, his tongue pinched between his teeth, while Crowley made a big show of looking flustered. He didn’t need to fake the shaking of his hands as he added the string of frosted berries, positioning them on top of his mountain of whipped cream, just a little off centre. It looked almost perfect and he winced in expectation of the judge’s comments about the missing truffles. Mary would say something about style being important but the substance needing to be there, and Crowley could see it, how all his comments about the look of thing would be edited to make it look as if his superficiality had caused his own downfall.

“Time’s up!”

Crowley stood back from the bench. If you didn’t know there were supposed to be truffles, it didn’t look half bad, he supposed. But to him, the cake looked naked, lacklustre, like a thing anyone could make if they had half an idea of how to find the on button on a stand mixer. He gritted his teeth as the camera panned around the tent, taking them all in with their festive headwear askew with effort and stress. He wiped his hands on the front of his apron, sneaking a glance across at Aziraphale’s cake, where the smooth top looked like a snowy postcard, on which the angels made from truffles stood to attention.

One after the other, they were called to the front for the judges to slice up their hard work and judge their creations. Newt went first, almost bursting into tears when Mary said that despite being welded to the bottom of the pan, his jam looked a very good colour. They passed on tasting Shadwell’s cake because of eggs-on-the-floor factor, dubiously taking a tiny piece of icing each and declaring it a passable consistency based on nothing but determination to find a positive in the spirit of the festive season.

Anathema waited patiently in her reindeer antlers while Paul talked about how difficult matcha is to pull off and winced as he tasted the cake, her face fixed as if she was already calculating what precisely to hex him with. Madame Tracy garnered some praise for decoration—Mary felt it met the festive brief perfectly—but doing the same recipe twice didn’t go unnoticed. “Well at my age, dear,” Madame Tracy said, “you just can’t be bothered to learn anything new, can you?”

Sue called Aziraphale forward next, and he walked slowly down the aisle, his cake held before him as if it were as precious as the baby Jesus. He placed it on the table and stepped back, worrying at the straps on his apron before falling still as Paul reached for the cake slice.

The icing gave perfectly as Paul cut into it, revealing a cake that Crowley could tell even from the back of the tent was baked to perfection and would taste so. As he lifted a piece to his lips, Paul closed his eyes to savour it, and Mary went to great lengths to admire one of the sugarcraft flowers and say how nicely done it was, the petals very dainty and well executed.

“That is—that is absolutely heavenly,” Paul said.

Aziraphale’s tinsel halo wobbled on its spring as he dipped his head in gratitude. He turned on his heel and beamed his way back to his bench, whispering, “Good luck,” to Crowley as he returned his cake to the end of his bench.

With heavy feet and leaden arms, Crowley lifted his own cake up. The walk to the judges seemed to take an age, but he still arrived before he was fully prepared for it. He stared at the gap between Paul’s eyebrows as he went over what his cake was and confirmed that yes, there was something missing because his truffles hadn’t set.

Mary’s face crinkled with consternation, as if some grand failing of the universe had happened, but she waved over the top of it and declared it, “very festive looking, anyway.”

They cut into the cake and made impressed noises over the flavour, with just one aside about how a little kirsch or other liquor would’ve perked it up a little, perhaps.

Crowley nodded. Even if this was the place to declare that being near a bottle of the stuff was, he feared, more temptation than he could handle, he wouldn’t have been able to find his voice. He kept his mouth a neat line as they’d delivered their verdicts and retired to the judging tent to debate the winner.

While they did so, the other contestants scattered for a much-needed tea and pee break, leaving him alone with Aziraphale. “If you ask me, yours looks perfectly delectable without truffles,” he said.

“You don’t have to.”

“Have to what?”

“Be nice to me.”

Aziraphale considered his face, frowning just slightly. “You made a very good show of yourself, you know,” he said. “Undeniably you’re an incredibly talented baker. I hardly think it matters, really, who actually wins.”

“Please spare me the sermon on it being the taking part that counts.”

Crowley watched his words land and Aziraphale cross his arms protectively across his apron. He wanted to explain it, to say: _you’re not the only one who’s got people watching what you do, and not the only one for whom disappointment will have consequences. Your need was greater than mine, that’s all._ But he’d made his choice, and there was nothing he or Aziraphale could do about it now.

* * *

They all sat on stools between the benches, waiting for the results. The judges had debated long and hard and Mel and Sue were at pains to say how close a contest it had been.

The announcement was exactly as Crowley expected; Aziraphale pipped him to the post with his perfect Show Stopper. He accepted everyone’s congratulations and hugs with beam after beam and astonished noise after line about how he couldn’t believe it, his glowing face disappearing behind the massive bunch of flowers thrust into his hands so only the tinsel halo gave away who he was.

There would be interviews to do and possibly a small party back at the hotel. Crowley hopped into his car and left them to it, obliterating as much as he could of the pictures in his head with Barbara Lewis turned up as high as the stereo would go.


	4. Chapter 4

_The stuffing might be turning dry and all your roast potatoes eaten, but it’s not time to put away the oven gloves just yet. Tonight’s Great British Bake Off features a host of famous faces showing off their festive bakes in aid of charity, but who’ll be boom and crust and who’ll have a loaf-changing experience? We’ve had a sneak peek at the episode and here’s our countdown of the top 12 things to look out for, dough betide you if you miss them:_

> _12\. Former Blue Peter presenter NEWT PULSIFER faces a bake-lash from the judges after his attempt to make his own jam goes awry._
> 
> _11._ _Muffin compares to PAUL HOLLYWOOD’s withering stare when one contestant tries to get away with presenting the same cake twice._
> 
> _10\. Twitter vicar REVEREND AZIRAPHALE might have God on his side but still kneads a hand with his technical._
> 
> _9\. Mel and Sue explain how the Yule Log came to be part of our festive status dough._
> 
> _8\. Socialite and medium MADAME TRACY gets caked over the coals when her creation is more glitter than cake._
> 
> _7\. Legend in the baking rock star ANTHONY CROWLEY is left with flour grapes after a mishap with his truffles._
> 
> _6._ _Podcaster and occultist ANATHEMA DEVICE takes a whisk with some interesting flavour combinations._
> 
> _5._ _Temperatures rise as two contestants get romantic._
> 
> _4._ _Good Cop, Bad Cop’s SERGEANT SHADWELL has a batter pill to swallow after the judges turn their noses up at his creation._
> 
> _3._ _It’s a barrel of loafs as a storm whips through the tent._
> 
> _2._ _Will MARY BERRY re-torte to making a batch of mince pies to show PAUL HOLLYWOOD once and for all that her recipe is superior?_
> 
> _1\. T_ _he contest goes down to the wire with two contestants neck-and-neck as they enter the final round. But which way will the wind dough?_

_The episode airs on BBC1 at 8pm, set the video if needs crust._

“Oh for the love of—” Crowley shoved the newspaper away from him. He couldn’t move for this stuff: an innocent trip to the newsagent to acquire a pint of milk and some chewing gum had been utterly ruined by the sight of himself grinning out from the front of the festive _Radio Times_ , a holly crown on his head and Aziraphale at his elbow, standing so close it looked like the tinsel from his halo tickled Crowley’s temple. Not to mention the interviews. In the last few days before Christmas, he’d called in to Zoe Ball and Nick Grimshaw, and had to suffer through appearances not only on _This Morning_ but _The One Show_ , sandwiched in between a segment on Christmas debt and carol singers belting out a festive classic from underneath a giant tree.

He sipped at his coffee. At least after tonight, after the thing had actually aired, it would be over. No more sitting on a sodding sofa and trying to smile through inane questions about whether he spent the festive season delighting his family with tray after tray of mince pies.

Did no one do any research anymore? Surely the most cursory of Googles would’ve turned up that no, Crowley didn’t have any family—to feed mince pies to or otherwise. At least Aziraphale had had the good grace to shift awkwardly on his behalf and interjected with a tale about how on Christmas Eve he liked to tour the village with a basket of homemade treats, dolling them out to anyone who looked in need of a little festive cheer.

Crowley dragged the newspaper back across the table. The picture of Aziraphale had captured him midway through tossing some icing sugar down to roll his icing out on, puffing it up into clouds around him. The soft-focus effect was…mildly affecting. Not for the first time, he wondered what it would be like to pop over to Aziraphale’s and talk about baking, showing each other cookery books and comparing notes on pastry recipes and old favourites.

They’d texted a few times. Well, more than a few times. Most days, at least once. It was just nice to have someone who actually cared that he got a better result on his choux buns by turning the temperature down five degrees and that he’d finally perfected a chocolate crème pat.

His mind wandered to making something together. Picking up a particularly long and fragile piece of pastry between them, elbow to elbow, breath held and fingers working as gently as they could; Aziraphale slipping behind him, threading his arms under Crowley’s to show him a technique he’d mastered for kneading a particularly difficult kind of dough, the feel of him pressed against Crowley’s back, all warmth and certainty.

Crowley’s phone buzzed, and seeing it was the vicar himself, Crowley shook his head to clear his thoughts. What on earth was he doing?

_Ready for the big day?_

Crowley replied with a dour selfie. Was it possible to prepare for national, truffle-based humiliation? He was already braced for the barrage of jokes about how he should stick to chords and the phone calls offering him lucrative reunion tours on the nostalgia circuit. Which would be…fine. He’d swallow it if he had to. Was it so wrong to want something different, though? Something he actually enjoyed doing? Something—

His phone buzzed again, this time with a picture of Aziraphale so blurry, Crowley could only tell it was him because he’d become accustomed to deciphering the splodges of colour that made up his face. The first time it had happened, he’d assumed it was a pocket text, that what he was actually seeing was a close-up look at Aziraphale’s jacket lining with some accidentally-captured chin, but over time he’d learned that phone cameras were as impenetrable to Aziraphale as the rules of cricket were to him. Either he didn’t know it was possible to take more than one photo at a time or felt morally bound to send the first one, regardless of whether it showed the thing he’d intended to capture or not.

Crowley sent back a thumbs up emoji, having also learned that Aziraphale took even the slightest hint of criticism about his photography very personally but delighted in ‘those tiny cartoons you send me’. Crowley had had a whale of time with that knowledge, sending him cows and sloths and pasties, clovers and shrimp and trains, and, of course, the occasional rainbow when he sensed Aziraphale’s spirits were low.

He spent the rest of the day pottering around with his plants while Dee Dee Sharp and Al Green and The Flirtations twisted out of his speakers. It was as close as he came these days to productivity, rearranging grow lights and checking the water meters and making new mixtapes full of soul lost gems in his head.

As the clock ticked towards show time, he felt some of the old adrenaline start to course through his veins. It wasn’t the same as being in the band—there was no sound check and no rows about if the bass was too loud and the drums too quiet, no grimy dressing room littered with vodka bottles, and no smell of old disco smoke imbedded into the furniture—but there was a crackle of adrenaline, the anticipation of not knowing quite how things would go.

At five to eight, Satan texted to say he was watching. Just that, but in it, Crowley felt the implication that one false move and all the stories he’d been holding about Crowley over the years would mysteriously find their way to the front pages.

Crowley wasn’t sure he could face watching the show; wasn’t sure he could face _not_ watching, either. He dropped onto the sofa and rummaged between the cushions for the remote, flicking it on just as the announcer finished his intro and the credits started to roll, Mel and Sue ambling over the grass with the tent in the background, bickering about what the worst part of Christmas was, getting socks or disappointing crackers that didn’t bang.

“…welcome to the Great _Festive_ British Bake Off.”

Crowley took a deep breath and slid down the back of the sofa, so he could regard the rest over the hillock of his own sternum. He’d seen himself on TV before, had been forced to watch interviews back with a running commentary of how facile and boring he sounded, but this was different. For one thing, he was in daylight, walking towards the tent with his fellow contestants, the plastic holly in his hair glinting and a genuine chuckle at something Aziraphale was saying on his mouth. He looked more human than he ever had in any of the rockumentaries, which were shot in dingy studios or dark corridors between shows, although whether it was the lighting or that his diet now consisted of more than whiskey and whatever drugs were lying around, he couldn’t say.

He watched as this new Crowley filed to his bench. He didn’t look nearly as out of place as he’d feared he might donning a festive green apron and contemplating the Kitchen Aid.

The introduction to the first round was padded out with the interviews they’d shot early on, and Crowley found himself staring at Aziraphale as he spoke, nervously twiddling his fingers in front of him while keeping his face serene. The theme music ramped up underneath him as the edit cut to a montage of close ups on trays hitting counters and people reaching for flour, Anathema ducking down until she was eye-level with the measuring cup, Newt staring at her from across the tent with a bemused sort of fascination, while Shadwell banged his scales on the edge of the bench and cursed it for not working before Madame Tracy wafted over and showed him where the on switch was. He watched as his own face, a picture of concentration, swam across the screen, Aziraphale in the background casting a quick prayer to Heaven as he tried to prise the flour jar open.

Crowley’s phone lit up:

_Golly this is tense isn’t it?_

Crowley thumbed a reply:

_You know who wins, angel_

But he couldn’t bring himself to send it, so he swapped it for a grinning emoji that in no way resembled the expression he was actually making, spinning his phone on his shirt for something to distract himself with.

The first round was filled with close ups on Newt and Shadwell as they lumbered their way to inevitable failure, with a couple of lighter moments where Mary and Madame Tracy talked about flattering colours for ladies of a certain age and how neither of them put much store in that sort of thing, Madame Tracy showing off the iridescent glitter she’d brought to give her cupcakes a little added sparkle. The camera lingered on Aziraphale’s impeccable fruit decorations before cutting away to the judges in a huddle, wondering if he’d left himself too much to do. Their comments ambled to Crowley after a moment, with a brief discussion of if he’d be able to pull off such a dark mixture without drying it out, and a cliff-hanger, “We’ll see, I suppose,” from Paul.

Crowley had watched every single episode of the show at least three times, but even still, he felt unprepared for the second-hand adrenaline he experienced when Mel and Sue started giving them time-checks. If anything, he felt more tense watching it back—Anathema hurrying her decorations and Newt scurrying back and forth with a pan—than he had in the tent when he’d been focused on the arrangement of his own hibiscus flowers.

His cupcakes, even though he said so himself, did look rather fetching, and rather more festive than he’d thought they might when subjected to a lingering camera shot with a blurry Christmas tree in the background. He didn’t go in for Christmas decorating much. When it was only him who’d see it, there didn’t seem much point, and he could hardly maintain his reputation as rock music’s premier occult-worshipping bad boy if he covered his apartment in fairy lights. For the last couple of years, when he’d actually been in one place rather than rushing between Christmas Eve party bookings and wherever he was performing on New Year’s Eve, he’d taken to sneaking out with a travel mug of hot chocolate for a wander down Regent Street after midnight, taking in the window displays and the trumpeting angels strung across the road, but that was as far as it went.

He fixed his gaze back on the screen, where the judges were about to offer their verdict, so he wouldn’t dally into another daydream about what it might be like to take that walk with another person, their mittened hand tucked into the crook of his elbow.

Aziraphale’s cupcakes filled the screen, Mary clapping with delight in the background and declaring how splendid they looked, Aziraphale’s bashful face and twinkling eyes not hiding the genuine pride he felt at the accomplishment. They’d talked, the evening he fell over, when Crowley walked him up to his room and they loitered in the corridor long after having officially said goodbye, about how Aziraphale had every single one of Mary’s books—first editions, too—and aside from a signed Nigella, they were his prize possession. When Crowley had shown a flicker of interest, he’d pulled up photos on his phone of his library. These were in focus, so well taken that Crowley could make out the covers belonging to volumes he also owned, and dozens more he’d only seen referenced in other books.

On the TV, Crowley was grinning at the announcement of his win, then under the trees outside talking about his recipe generation process and why hibiscus was such a favourite of his. Normally watching himself like this, his head would fill with criticisms from Satan— _you’re going on too long Crowley, who do you think cares what you have to say?—_ but this time, he thought he came across as rather softer than he’d ever seen himself and…he didn’t hate it.

The footage of the technical round was focused, understandably enough, on the storm and subsequent power outage. They’d managed to capture plenty of shots of people looking worried—Madame Tracy lifting her shawl up to hide behind as a particularly vicious bolt of lightning struck, Newt cowering closer and closer to Anathema and jumping as one of the production team dropped a cake tin, Mel and Sue huddled together in front of the tent window making jokes about how heavy rain was also a staple of the Great British Christmas, that there was nothing more festive, in fact, than a massive storm. The voice over chimed in, “But one contestant retained their cool, calm demeanour,” before a panning shot revealed Crowley asleep in the corner, his hands curled into his armpits and his apron balled up as a pillow.

_Did you know they filmed me sleeping?_

Three dots appeared in the text window almost immediately.

_You looked very peaceful_

Crowley wasn’t sure that was the point, but the show had moved on to the aftermath of the storm, homing in on Anathema as she scrutinised the instructions, muttering about what on earth they meant and why weren’t they clearer about what they wanted, before she meticulously rolled her Yule Log in the wrong direction so it more resembled a croissant than what it was supposed to.

From there it was a short cut to them all placing their versions behind a picture of themselves on a snowflake tablecloth, Crowley looking down the line as he placed his to assess how well everyone else had done. In the line, his stood out for both being neatest and one of the only ones with actual decorations, while Shadwell and Newt’s both looked more like the aftermath of some sort of natural disaster.

The judges fell in behind them, Paul surveying them with an expression that ranged from almost-pleasure to barely-concealed contempt, while Mary nodded thoughtfully and reached for a knife to start dissecting them. Winning the technical had been on Crowley’s secret bucket list for as long as he’d had such a thing, and he winced at the screen where it was apparent on his face just how much it meant to him to hear the judges say, “And this one is in first place. A lovely job under less than ideal circumstances,” while gesturing to his picture and plate.

There was a break where they cut to a montage of interviews, bon mots about the storm and jokes about Crowley sleeping through the entire thing, and then they were back for the Show Stopper. The bit Crowley had been dreading.

His thumb made for his mouth and he nibbled on the skin around his nail all the way through Mel and Sue’s explanation of what they were supposed to be making. The thing that made it most unbearable was how earnest he looked in every single shot. Focus dripped from him. He was palpably intent on getting things perfect, and it was a marked contrast to Madame Tracy and Shadwell, who’d mostly given up on it being an actual contest and were mucking about and having a good time. Aziraphale hummed to himself while he moved through the recipe, working faster than he had in previous rounds but with a joviality, whereas Crowley was all purpose. He knew it would make for great telly when he made a mistake, but that didn’t make it any easier to watch.

Crowley heaved himself to his feet and paced to the kitchen. Maybe a cup of tea would help. He opened the cupboard, surveyed his collection, which ranged from Darjeeling through strong black teas and all the way back to herbal concoctions with names like Chamomile Promise and Bergamot Dream. It had been one of the things which had kept him sober, acquiring tea, as much about the process of going out and buying a new and obscure one to stay busy than wanting to drink them. As many as there were on the shelf, none of them suited his mood, so instead, he texted Aziraphale:

_Ready for your moment of victory?_

There were still fifteen minutes to go, but they couldn’t be far off the moment where Crowley would head to the fridge. He stood in the doorway, swivelling his phone between his finger and thumb, focusing on it so the TV screen was barely perceptible.

It still happened, though, there on the screen as he knew it would: himself crossing to the fridge with his bowl of truffle mix, coming back and fussing with whatever it was he was fussing with, and then a moment later, going back to retrieve his truffle mix. In full HD, the Crowley on the TV paused at the fridge, frowning long and hard. And then he was heading back to his bench, with a bowl that was, now the moments were side by side, obviously smaller than the one he’d put in there.

Crowley’s whole body grimaced, his shoulders coming up to hug his ears, stomach trying to disown him and retreat through his own spine.

He braced for the furious phone call from Satan, the diatribe about how not even the nostalgia circuit would want him now, that that was it, he was done with Crowley. He saw himself waking up tomorrow to journalists hammering on his door and ringing his phone off the hook, trying to get a comment on a story about him doing something unconscionable at an area of historical and cultural importance with a minor member of a European royal family. Satan had enough material to bleed at least six figures out of him as a final salvo, and Crowley couldn’t blame him, really. It was one thing to be seen quite obviously cheating on a baking show, quite another to do it so someone else would win.

He checked his phone. It appeared to be working, which made no one calling something of a puzzle. He swiped at the screen to check he had signal and battery. Still, nothing.

On the screen, he was acting his way through being distraught and actually selling it. All those years pretending to be channelling demonic energy on stage had served him well, apparently. He sat on the arm of the sofa, watching the rest play out: the close ups on his ruined glaze; the switch to Aziraphale making perfect truffle angels and dipping them in melted white chocolate. It all led to where he inevitably knew it would, to himself standing behind Aziraphale and applauding him as he was declared the winner, grinning like he meant it, like he was a good loser and taking part _was_ the only thing that truly mattered to him.

The interviews rolled into the credits, Aziraphale saying how delighted he was to have won and explaining his winnings would be going to help a charity for homeless LGBTQIA people, which was very close to his heart. His eyes glistened and Crowley wished he’d stuck around to offer him the bump of a sympathetic elbow.

Shadwell, with perfect comic timing, declared the entire thing a fix and that Paul and Mary must’ve been bribed—yes bribed by a vicar—while Anathema, Newt, and Madame Tracy all made gracious noises about Aziraphale being a worthy winner. In place of actual comment from Crowley, they’d used something he’d said earlier about only ever being one broken egg away from disaster and that being part of baking, which seemed a fitting end to the whole thing before the credits rolled, accompanied by footage of some folk the charity had helped.

Crowley flicked the TV off. Next up was some kind of animated penguin adventure and he didn’t need that sort of thing in his life. He checked his phone again, remembering that he’d messaged Aziraphale and not received a reply. Still nothing, and Satan remained quiet. Crowley sighed. In all of this, he hadn’t bothered to plan for what he’d do once it was all over.

He did the only thing he could think of: paced around for a bit fretting, and then put on his old soul mix tape and let Dionne Warwick lull him to sleep.

* * *

Crowley woke to hammering on the door. He grimaced at the darkness, rubbing at his eyes, but from the sounds of the thumping, they weren’t likely to give up. He swung his feet out onto the cool tiled floor, lifting onto his tiptoes to avoid contact with it as much as possible. He hopped to the door, grabbing a coat from the coat stand next to it and pulling it around himself. If there was a photographer, at least they’d get a picture of him looking suitably debauched in only his underwear and a faux fur coat that cost more than most people earned in a year. He made a suitably grumpy face and swung the door open, but the, “What?” he’d been planning on hurling out into the corridor died on his lips.

It wasn’t a member of the press.

It was Aziraphale.

It was Aziraphale bundled up against the cold in a giant multi-coloured scarf, with a flask tucked under his arm.

“I need a word with you,” he said.

“It’s—it’s four o’clock in the morning.”

“I’m well aware—I had to wait quite a long time for a replacement bus service to Gatwick.”

Crowley grimaced in both sympathy and confusion, waving at his flat in invitation. For want of better things to do, he stood, shifting from foot to foot and tugging the coat around him, as Aziraphale surveyed the hallway, which—not unlike the rest of the flat—was a homage to dark colours and borderline erotic paintings of fruit.

Aziraphale turned smartly on his heel. “Look, Crowley,” he said, forcing his eyes back up from Crowley’s chest. “You must know why I’m here.”

Crowley shrugged.

Aziraphale’s face had been aiming for stern, but collapsed in on itself, resulting in an expression that held nothing but soft pleading. “You thought I wouldn’t notice?”

“Notice what?”

“You know what.”

“I—I really haven’t the faintest—”

“The truffles,” Aziraphale said, pleading now just tinged with exasperation. “You switched them. You took the ones that hadn’t set. You took _mine_.”

Crowley shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat. “Didn’t,” he said, because really, how was Aziraphale going to prove it? It wasn’t like he would’ve been able to tape the show to use in evidence, given how much he struggled to understand how to play a WhatsApp video.

Aziraphale sighed. “We both know very well what you did. And—it was very gallant.”

“It wasn’t.”

“What was it, then?” Aziraphale said, with a look that said if he wasn’t a vicar and didn’t have his hands full, he might punch Crowley in the face for his own good.

Crowley lifted his shoulders about his ears. “I don’t know. I felt—angry about the bishop. Didn’t want you to have to move away from your parish and stop tweeting about cheese.”

“You don’t even read my tweets about cheese.”

“No, but someone should be tweeting about cheese.” Crowley made an in-depth study of the floor underneath Aziraphale’s smart brown shoes. “You should be tweeting about cheese.”

Aziraphale let out a soft sigh, and his shoes took a step closer. “Well, I’m glad you think so. And might I just say that—the judges were absolutely wrong about your Black Forest needing kirsch. I tried some after you’d left and—” Crowley looked up. “It was absolute perfection, of course. And more to the point, I think seeing you doing so well will have given hope to a lot of people. It was very brave, what you said. What you did.”

“It wasn’t, it was—”

Crowley’s protest was forced back into his mouth by Aziraphale’s lips abruptly being against his.

It took him a moment to realise that Aziraphale was actually kissing him and another to stop trying to get a counterpoint in. He sank against Aziraphale’s mouth, tasting the warmth of him, the soft rustle of his scarf brushing against Crowley’s skin. He’d thought about this, had contemplated whether Aziraphale would taste of breath mints and pleasantries or faintly of church wine consumed at the end of a service to avoid leaving unholy leftovers. In reality, it was more like peaches and ardour, the promise of more in every swipe of his tongue as his fingers rose to cup Crowley’s cheek more gently than it probably deserved.

“Isn’t this against your religion?” Crowley murmured.

Aziraphale pressed him back against the wall, setting his flask carefully on Crowley’s side table next to a bust of a prominent 18th Century occultist. “Falling in love?” Aziraphale said, his hands making the most of their new freedom by finding their way inside Crowley’s coat to his ribs. “No, I don’t believe it is,” he said, silencing whatever Crowley was going to say next with another press of his mouth, the kind which took all word and thought with it, and left only the deed of allowing Aziraphale to walk him back towards the bedroom.

* * *

Devilishly Heavenly Bakes sat on the corner of the High Street in Aziraphale’s parish. It enjoyed unparalleled views across the rolling hills of the South Downs, where lazy fog took most of the morning to fade away and the sea glittered faintly in the distance when it did. The window display was always stuffed with the most mouth-watering morsels, from cupcakes topped with wild hibiscus flowers to miniature rainbow bagel bites which flew out almost as quickly as they could make them.

Crowley unlocked the door and turned the sign around to open, as he had done every morning for the last three months. The grand opening had made the papers, thanks to all their _Bake Off_ opponents popping along and agreeing to take a photo outside in the autumn sunshine. Crowley thought it would never look lovelier than it had that day, with its freshly painted sign and bountiful offerings on show for the first time. He hadn’t reckoned on Aziraphale’s passion for Christmas, however, for the garlands of cedar and fir that wound along the counter and swagged across the shelves, for the fake snow in the window, or for the wreath on the door that was so filled with dried fruit and eucalyptus, making it fit through the door itself posed a real issue.

He stepped inside, breathing in the familiar scent of fresh bread, the warmth of the Christmas spices wafting towards him and taking the edge off the cold that wrapped around him from his walk up the hill. Everywhere he looked, there were bunches of holly and piles of glittering fruits Aziraphale had stayed up late into the night preparing, humming carols to himself. Crowley smiled, thinking of how he’d wound his arms around him as he worked, kissed the back of his neck, and how Aziraphale had abandoned his task and left icing sugar handprints all over him.

He pottered through setting up the till and writing today’s specials on the chalkboard, a dozen small tasks that he would, in his former life, have found banal beyond belief. After that, he turned his attention to the window display, arranging the cakes he’d finished decorating the night before into a centrepiece. Each had a coating of icing like the fluffiest duvet and a winter woodland of glossy berries or tiny fir trees arranged on the top, save for the one Aziraphale insisted must feature a host of truffle angels, dipped in white chocolate, the filling made with Crowley’s homemade cherry syrup.

It had been a strange old year since the contest. The new career Crowley had hoped his appearance on the show would generate hadn’t really materialised, save for a few more chat show offers and a feature in one of the broadsheet Sunday magazines where he’d talked openly about both his struggles and his healing.

The year had, however, been filled with discoveries: Aziraphale was a connoisseur of many things including flavoured lube; his mouth was capable of at least fourteen things Crowley thought were distinctly sinful; and he’d found that now he wasn’t forking out for extended stays in country houses full of addiction coaches, the Hell Hounds royalty cheques were enough to purchase an old shop in the countryside. The bishop had backed off, less to do with Aziraphale winning and slightly more to do with the realistic blood-dripping heart Crowley had crafted out of marzipan and had couriered to him, and Satan had likewise decided to leave Crowley to do his own thing after an encounter with Aziraphale, the details of which Crowley had never quite been able to get to the bottom of.

Crowley set down the final cake and brushed the fake snow up around its base, gaze catching on movement at the bottom of the hill. Clouds of breath were emitting from Aziraphale as he puffed his way up towards the shop from the tiny church with a rainbow flag outside. Crowley’s breathing hitched at the sight of him, even though they’d only been apart for a few hours. With his fluffy hair, pink cheeks, and giant multi-coloured scarf, he was a perfect confection of a person.

Aziraphale came to a halt in front of the window display, hands on his hips as he took in Crowley’s handiwork. Beaming at it, he beckoned Crowley outside and met him with a hug that was mostly coat and scarf and a kiss that would knock a lesser man off his Cuban heels. “We should take a picture,” he said, “for my loyal followers.”

Crowley threw an arm around his shoulders, ruffling his own hair up into a quiff while Aziraphale wrestled his phone out of his pocket. Aziraphale held his phone aloft, opened the camera, and hit the button with his mittened thumb.

The resulting picture was a blur of black and red on one side and cream and rainbow on the other, but Crowley didn't mind. He already knew he’d treasure that picture, that he’d get it printed and framed and hang it up in the shop, perhaps. The biggest thing he’d learned lately, during this very strange year where nothing went quite the way he expected it to, was that embracing imperfection was sometimes the only way to find the very best of things.


End file.
